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Science and Prayer 


Studies in Communion and Intercession 


By 
HERBERT BOOTH SMITH, D.D. 


PASTOR, IMMANUEL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
LOS ANGELES, CAL. 


Author of “The New Earth,” etc. 





New York CHICAGO 
Fleming H. Revell Company 


LONDON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, 1924, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


PREFACE 


series of addresses in the pulpit of the Im- 

manuel Presbyterian Church, of Los Angeles. 
They pretend to no special profundity or origi- 
nality. They are just a busy pastor’s weekly 
messages to his people, in the effort to build up 
that most important thing, the prayer-life of his 
flock. Many of the hearers desired that they be 
put in some permanent form. This little book 
answers their request. If perchance any others 
find them helpful, we shall count them as members 
of our larger congregation. 

Various manuals and booklets on prayer have 
been consulted in the preparation of the addresses. 
Special mention should be made of Dr. Harry 
Emerson Fosdick’s little book, The Meaning of 
Prayer, which offered helpful suggestions and from 
which some of the illustrations are taken. If these 
pages shall help someone to pray, they will have 
fulfilled their mission. 


| Deeg chapters were originally given as a 


HY B.S. 


Immanuel Church Study, 


Los Angeles, Califorma. 
3 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/scienceprayerstu00smit 


Contents 


. Has Mopern Science INVALI- 


DATEDER RAVER DY Utes wee chan 


. Dors Gop ANSWER PRAYER? .... 


. How To OstaIn' VICTORY IN 


POAT Rune iemnn gis tac me UL ir atta 


. Is Ir WortH.WHILE TO PRAY? .. 
. How Dozs Gop ANSWER PRAYER? 


. THE PrRoBLEM oF UNANSWERED 


PRAY Ree re ent Rte ene Narellan EE 


PAVE SHOULD WE PRAY fon wuita 


. WHat Are SOME OF THE HIN- 
DRANCES TO SUCCESSFUL 
PRAVER Coin Gu meen ERM Cats 

. WHat ARE THE OBJECTIONS TO 
TERAVER ps ice vais niet tare anke hers cami 

DESY MMETRICAT: JC RAVER 0, gis's elias 


RRELOW SHALL OVE NERAV Eo ean. 
Pall 


PRAVER AND “WORRY tooo uiwhenies 
5 


123 
135 
148 





I 


HAS MODERN SCIENCE INVALI- 
DATED PRAYER? 


OME years ago Professor Leuba of Bryn 
Mawr undertook to find out how many 
scientists believed in prayer. He went about 

it in this way. He sent out a questionnaire to 
various groups of learned men and asked them to 
register their belief or disbelief in a personal God. 
Then he explained that by a “personal God” he 
meant One to whom one may pray in the expecta- 
tion of receiving an answer. The returns showed 
a majority of negative answers and he announced 
that the more eminent men in each group were 
more pronounced unbelievers than the less eminent 
were. If Leuba’s conclusions are final, then belief 
in prayer is a sign of ignorance and the more you 
believe, the more ignorant you are. If so, blessed 
be ignorance! 

But happily wisdom is not all confined to the 
aforenamed professor. Morse, the inventor of the 
telegraph, was a more famous scientist than 
Leuba and yet he confessed that while working 
on his invention, whenever he came to a perplex- 
ing place, he found refuge in prayer, as a result 

7 


8 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


of which his mind seemed to receive fresh inspira- 
tion and he was able to see the next step ahead. 
No wonder the first message sent over the wire 
was, “What hath God wrought!’ Lord Kelvin, 
when Professor of Physics in Glasgow University, 
was a greater authority than Leuba and yet every 
day he was wont to open his classroom lectures 
with prayer. Sir James Dawson was a name better 
known than the Physics Professor, and Dawson 
said that a naturalist ought to be the last man in 
the world to object to the efficacy of prayer, since 
prayer is one of the most potent of natural forces. 
The cry of the young raven is a prayer to the 
parent bird who never fails to respond. The bleat 
of the lamb is a prayer which brings its dam to its 
side. Isn’t it strange then to suppose that the only 
being in the Universe who can’t answer prayer is 
the One Who alone has all power at His com- 
mand? 

One thing that ought to be noticed at the outset 
of a discussion like this is that the specialist in one 
department of human knowledge has no right to 
cast contempt on the assured conclusions of a 
specialist in another department. Leuba probably 
knows as little about prayer as some aged saint of 
God does about biology. But let us hope the dear 
saint has sense enough to refrain from criticising 
things he knows nothing about. Charles Darwin 
said years ago that the Church was ready to accept 
any scientific doctrine on which scientific workers 


INVALIDATED PRAYER 9 


are themselves agreed. Well, if that is so, the 
converse ought to be true that the scientific world 
should accept those religious doctrines on which 
the Church is agreed. The fact is, science asks us 
to accept some hard things on faith. Science says 
that a pin falling to the ground jars the earth and 
we say, “Well, we don’t feel any jar, but if you 
say it must be so, we'll try to feel it next time 
you drop one—we’ll do our best.” 

Science says that there are in far off Aldebaran, 
sodium and magnesium and calcium and bismuth, 
for the spectroscope says so. [Edison’s tasimeter 
measures the amount of heat received from 
Arcturus, a star inconceivably distant and we say, 
“Well, we don’t feel the heat, but we'll take your 
word for it.”” Then in turn we say, “God is and He 
is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, 
the Hearer and Answerer of prayer”—and it is only 
fair for science to reply, “Our instruments are not 
built for detecting God or telephoning to Him, 
but your sensitive souls are so built; and just as 
you accept the evidence of our tasimeter recording 
heat millions of miles away, so we accept the evi- 
dence of your souls registering God, though we 
see Him not.” 


I. Consider Prayer in Its Relation to Natural 
Law. 


A great change has passed over the thinking of 
men since the advent of modern science. Long 


10 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


years ago, before the scientific attitude became as 
pronounced as it is today, the popular impression 
among Christian people was that every event which 
occurred in the world of nature was due to the 
direct exertion of will and power on the part of 
God. Thus, for example, if a storm raged it was 
thought that God, by some immediate process, had 
called that storm into action. But in our times we 
have come to look upon all these natural phenomena 
as indicating what we call the “reign of law.” We 
have found we can depend on nature’s regularity. 
We can predict to a second the rising and setting of 
the sun. We can foretell eclipses. We can pro- 
phesy the condition of the weather days in advance. 
The result is that many people say—Why pray? 
Law has taken the place of God. Nature will have 
her way. If certain conditions in the atmosphere 
are likely to produce rain tomorrow, it is no use to 
pray for fair weather. If certain conditions pre- 
vail in a man’s body which presage death, it is no 
use to ask for his recovery. 

Well, let us stop a moment and look at this 
problem. What are these laws of nature which we 
are so afraid of ? Why, a law of nature is merely 
an observed uniformity, a sequence of cause and 
effect. Such a law itself is not capable of effecting 
anything. It is simply our way of grouping our 
observations. It is a description and nothing more. 
We simply have observed that nature usually does 
so and so and we assume she always has and always 


INVALIDATED PRAYER 11 


will. But scientists often discover that nature has 
a way of her own and hence a text-book on Physics 
of 1923 propounds very different theories from one 
of 1823. We used to think there were seventy ele- 
ments, but radium has changed all that. Even such 
standbys as the law of gravitation and the law of 
conservation of energy are in process of modifica- 
tion and may be merged into larger generalizations. 
So the wise scientist of today talks less dogmatically 
about natural laws than his father did. The fact 
is, there are laws beyond our ken which operate in 
spheres beyond our horizon and it is conceitedly 
foolish for us to suppose that all wisdom will die 
with us. Man by his inventive genius is discover- 
ing more and more of God’s secrets but God has 
known them all the time. 

We Christians believe God is a Personality and 
not merely a “‘modification of force.’’ As soon as 
you bring personality into the world, you have a 
power greater than nature. Personality can com- 
bine natural forces and without contradicting them 
can use them for the accomplishment of ends. For 
example, in the old days of sail boats, it was at 
first thought possible to sail a boat only the way the 
wind was blowing. Here’s a man on one side the 
bay who wants to cross to a sick friend. The wind 
is wrong. He prays God to change it. God does 
not, but the man in his desperation conceives the 
idea of a zig-zag course which finally gets him 
home. He has not violated any law of the wind but 


12 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


has combined opposite pressures and secured his 
end. Men are doing the same thing every day. 
pometimes men have been known to cause much 
needed rain by the use of heavy guns. It is a case 
of human ingenuity conquering nature. Every time 
you lift your hand you conquer gravitation. The 
power of your will is stronger than the power of 
gravity. So we see that man can manipulate 
natural laws for the accomplishment of his ends— 
why may not God do the same? When my small 
boy asks me to take him in my arms, in answering 
his prayer I overcome gravity for the sake of love. 
Methinks God can do the same thing for His 
children. : 

The problem of prayer in the last analysis is 
the problem of God. It all depends on how big your 
God is. If He or It is only an automaton, an un- 
known Force, then It is subject to nature’s laws. 
But if He is a Father—and Jesus said He was and 
He ought to have known—there is nothing He wills 
He cannot do. For there is nothing impossible to 
Almighty Love. 


II. Consider Prayer as a Form of Mental 
Energy. 


A very remarkable little book has been written 
by a layman who is a licentiate of the Royal Insti- 
tute of British Architects. This architect is used 
to measuring the forces of the material world but 
one would not expect him to rightly estimate the 


INVALIDATED PRAYER 13 


forces of the spiritual world; and yet he says that 
“prayer is at least as effective a force as steam or 
wind or water. It can now be scientifically held as 
one of the world’s great dynamics and can rightly 
claim the recognition usually granted to a cosmic 
force.” It is refreshing to Christians to see prayer 
recognized as a power, a force that changes things 
and accomplishes results which are visible in the 
material world. 

Psychology understands the mind of man better 
than it did years ago. It throws new light on 
prayer. It tells us that the mind of man consists 
of countless conscious wills all rooted in the sub- 
conscious mind or soul. Prayer then as a real 
exercise is an effort of the will toward an object 
of desire—it is the forth-putting of psychic energy. 
Its efficiency is largely proportional to its energy; 
that is, it is a form of mental energy, more or less 
intense, according as it engages more or less of 
the person uttering the prayer. James says, “the 
prayer of a righteous man availeth much in its 
working.” It is a form of energy and physics 
defines energy as the power to do work. Man is 
a bundle of desires and prayer is the outflow of 
Godward desire. What a new light this throws 
on prayer, both from the scientific and Christian 
point of view. Real prayer is not just the recita- 
tion of a set form of words, but the putting forth 
of mental and soul energy toward the accomplish- 
ment of a definite end. Someone has used the 


14 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


illustration of the radiogram. In order to overleap 
the Atlantic it requires high electric energy; so 
to overcome the opposition of many human minds, 
to open their souls to the voice of divine sugges- 
tion, prayer takes a high degree of desire and will 
which is put forth as St. Paul said, “with groan- 
ings that cannot be uttered.” 

Take just one illustration from the life of the 
early Church. See what prayer did in the 12th 
Chapter of Acts. When the chapter opens, Herod 
is on the throne and Peter is in prison. When 
the chapter closes, Herod has died an awful death 
and Peter has gone on his way rejoicing—an ex- 
convict who got out of jail in a wonderful way. 
How explain what happened? The fifth verse 
explains it: ‘“Peter was kept in prison, but prayer 
was made without ceasing of the Church unto 
God for him.” How do you suppose those Chris- 
tians prayed? It took real energy and power 
to unlock these prison gates and set St. Peter free. 
They did not lazily recite canned prayers after a 
mechanical fashion. That is only an exercise of 
the lips, but prayer is a gymnastics of the soul, 
even as Jesus Christ sweat great drops of blood 
when He prayed in the Garden. After their ener- 
getic, dynamic prayer, the answer came. Oh, that 
we might pray down obstacles and open gates in 
that way today! It would be a good thing for 
some great church to discontinue for a whole month 
all its settled forms of worship and just pray! 


INVALIDATED PRAYER 15 


III. Consider the scientific Basis of Intercessory 
Prayer. 


Do you realize that many of the modern inven- 
tions and theories are throwing a new light on 
prayer? Take, for example, wireless telegraphy in 
the realm of invention and telepathy in the realm 
of psychology. Men who accept these two things 
as facts have got to admit that they make prayer 
a very reasonable performance. Let us approach 
the subject from a new angle. Here are two 
personalities, man and God, trying to get in touch 
with each other. How shall they do it? Well, 
how do two men get into communication with 
one another—how do they bridge the chasms of 
space? In early days, A must go in person with 
his petition to B—or must send swift runners. 
Then came post-carriages and horses and these 
were regarded as a marvelous improvement. You 
could really send a letter to New York and get 
back an answer the same year! The first great 
victory over space was the telegraph. By its means 
two persons separated by great leagues of distance 
were put into instantaneous communication with 
each other. Think of a man sitting before an 
instrument and sending out a request, a prayer to 
London or New York and getting back an answer 
almost immediately! 


It looks as though men were beginning to learn 
something of the secrets of God, when they can 


16 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


take a heart-throb of human interest and transfer 
it by the vibrations of an electrical instrument 
hundreds of miles over a wire to another instru- 


ment and thus to another human heart on the other 
side of the continent. Next after the telegraph 
came the telephone which dispenses with the media- 
tor and puts us into immediate touch with our 
friend at the other end of the wire. Voice answers 
to voice and heart to heart. We are becoming 
less and less slaves of space and time, and more 
and more masters of the material in order for the 
victory of the spirit. The next advance was wire- 
less telegraphy, in which we dispense with the wires 
and simply talk through space. Wonderful and 
sublime! Between you and your friend is simply 
the limitless ether which is more sensitive to vibra- 
tions than the eye is to light. The inventor got 
hold of this fact and found that by shooting off 
into space a certain kind of vibration, he could 
pick up that same vibration hundreds and even 
thousands of miles away with an instrument keyed 
to that particular throb. 

And now there is one step more—and what is 
that? Telepathy—in which mind speaks to mind 
without the intervention of any physical means 
whatsoever. This is one of the accepted facts of - 
human experience. You send out a cry for soul 
help and your friend gets it yonder, 2000 miles 
away. How do you explain it? They tell us that 
the ether is the medium not only of light and 


INVALIDATED PRAYER 17 


electric vibrations, but of thought-vibrations, also. 
The two souls at the ends of this 2000 miles of 
distance are something like two wireless-telegraph 
stations. They are in sympathy with each other, 
which means they have the same rate of vibration. 
This comes very near to being a scientific demon- 
stration of the fact of prayer. For if two human 
souls can hear and answer each other irrespective 
of space and time, then surely the human soul and 
the divine can do likewise. For the soul is the 
subconscious mind and it is in the realm of the 
subconscious that these thought-vibrations take 
place. 

Does not this illumine the subject of interces- 
sory prayer? Prayer is an influence we can exert 
on the friend for whom we pray both directly and 
by way of heaven. Every true prayer is a positive 
force, a thought wave of great intensity flung 
out into the blue. If somebody could invent an 
instrument to catch up these waves and measure 
their intensity, he would be amazed at their power. 
Let me quote three widely different authorities. 
Here is Henry Sidgwick, the founder of the British 
Society of Psychical Research, who said “Tel- 
epathy is scientifically as well established as gravi- 
tation.” Again here is Dr. Hedge, Unitarian and 
Harvard professor of fifty years ago who wrote 
in “Reason and Religion,” “Every genuine prayer 
is a positive force in the universe of things. The 
motion may not reach to the outward visible 


18 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


result which the prayer contemplates; but every 
prayer, in proportion to the force that is in it, 
tends to that result.”” And here is David Hill, the 
missionary in China, who wrote once in his diary: 
“T feel very buoyant this morning; somebody must 
be ardently praying for me at home.” Here are 
three assertions: We can influence other souls— 
prayer is a real force—men have caught the throb 
of sympathetic souls. This is just proving the 
truth of what James said in his Epistle, “The 
supplication of a righteous man availeth much in 
its working,” or as the literal translation would be 
—“is very forceful in its energising.” May we not, 
as a result of this study, pray, as Paul said, not only 
with the spirit but with the understanding also; 
a.e. with a larger appreciation of the scientific and 
psychological background of prayer. 

A plain seaman stood on watch on the bridge 
of a U. S. battleship several hundred miles out on 
the Atlantic when a wireless was handed to him. 
“Little Donald passed away yesterday. Funeral 
Wednesday afternoon. Can you come? Mary.” 
The seaman forgot his watch. He saw the smiling 
face of his baby boy as he had left him three 
months before. His only boy—his hope. Then 
be broke and the Captain found him sobbing. 
“What's the matter, my lad?” The seaman stood 
at attention and handed the Captain the message. 
“Where do you live?” ‘Cleveland, Ohio, sir.” 
Then the Captain did some rapid figuring and in 


INVALIDATED PRAYER 19 


a moment the wireless of the big battleship began 
spluttering out messages to her sister ships 
in the vicinity. ‘Full steam ahead’ was the order. 
Soon a grey form appeared—a faster ship; the 
seaman was quickly transferred. The second 
battleship raced 200 miles until a torpedo-boat 
destroyer came up which had also received the 
wireless and into it the seaman descended. Then 
full steam ahead for the nearest port—a waiting 
taxi—the train which left in four minutes for 
Cleveland and the next afternoon, one hour before 
the funeral, the seaman-father stood looking down 
on his little boy, with the mother and wife in his 
arms. Three battleships somewhere on the Atlantic 
had felt the impulse of fatherhood. And shall not 
God hear His own elect who cry day and night 
unto Him? [ tell you, yes. Sailor-friend of mine, 
tossed on the high seas of life, the Captain waits 
for your message. 


“Speak to Him, then, for He hears, 
And spirit with spirit can meet; 
Closer 1s He than breathing, 
Nearer than hands and feet.” 


IT 


HOW CAN WE PROVE THAT 
GOD ANSWERS PRAYER? 


ENVY the teacher of mathematics. He deals 
- with things you can see on a blackboard. He 
"” does not ask his class to take his word for a 
single statement. They accept only what they can 
prove. “The square described on the hypothenuse 
of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the 
squares of the other two sides.” This isn’t a hymn 
or anthem but a solid fact—they can prove it. I 
envy the teacher of physics. “The volume of a body 
of gas at a constant temperature varies inversely as 
its pressure, density and elasticity.” This is Boyle’s 
Law. If any student disputes it, he may go to the 
laboratory and prove it. I envy the business man 
who deals in commodities you can handle. Here’s 
a pound of tea and there is a pound of coffee. But 
whoever heard of a pound of prayer? Invest so 
much prayer and get so much answer. Buy a nickel’s 
worth of blessing from the Almighty, forsooth! 
No, we don’t do things that way in religion. As 
soon as you enter the sphere of spiritual things, the 
old yardsticks, scales and tests have to be given up. 
And so the impression arises that religion deals with 
fancies, while science and business deal with facts. 


20 





DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 21 


Hence, I love to discover that there are some 
phases of religion where experience enters in to test 
the assertions made in the creed. Experience is a 
great word. It means “try the thing for yourself.” 
As Philip said to Nathanael, “Come and see.” 
Now, prayer offers itself to us as a field where we 
can test God. He asks us to doa certain thing and 
we will get a certain result. He says that if certain 
conditions are met, certain results will follow. 
Well, that is simple enough—meet the conditions 
and see if the results do follow. If they do, confess 
it; if they do not, publish it to all the world. Luke 
11:9 and 10 lays down three very important state- 
ments, each containing an imperative and a decla- 
ration: “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and 
ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you.” My question is, Is this true and can we prove 
it? I make three answers. 


I. It Can Be Proven That God Answers Prayer 
From the Testimony of Personal Christian Ex- 
perience. 


Emerson preached his first sermon on the sub- 
ject of Prayer. It came about in this way: He was 
walking through the open country when he met 
an aged labouring man leaning his weight on two 
sticks and sunning himself in the midday sun. 
Entering into conversation, the theme turned to 
prayer. The peasant made three remarkable state- 
ments which so impressed Emerson that he made 


22 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


them the heads of his first sermon. He said, ‘“Men 
are always praying; God is always answering; Be 
careful, therefore, what you ask for, for every true 
prayer is always answered.” 

Does experience bear this out? Does God 
actually hear and answer prayer as evidenced in 
daily life? Who can answer this question? Only 
a praying person, naturally. They say swimming 
is good exercise—but who knows? Only a swim- 
mer. Can I say it is not if I never go near the 
water? Of course not. They say golf is great 
sport, but only a golfer knows. Do we ask a man’s 
counsel in chemistry who has never been near a 
laboratory? Do we call in a physician who has 
never studied medicine when our loved ones are 
ill? No. We want a specialist in every line in 
this exacting twentieth century. And God knows 
the world needs specialists in prayer. Hence all 
this ridicule which people pour on prayer who know ~ 
nothing about it is beside the mark. It is the testi- 
mony of praying souls we have got to get in this 
matter. I heard of a man who criticised the mod- 
ern church very severely who later confessed he 
hadn’t been in a church for a dozen years. What 
did he know about it? Ridicule is often the refuge 
of ignorance. So if you insist on my answering 
whether God answers prayers, I must go to some 
askers; for answer implies a previous asking. 

Many Christians rise to take the witness stand 
here—but we can let only two or three speak. 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 23 


First, I call John Knox, but he is too weak to 
answer. It is about two o’clock in the afternoon. 
He raises two fingers and says, “Now for the last 
time I commend my spirit, soul and body into Thy 
hands, O Lord.” About five o’clock he said to his 
wife—and they were his last words—“Go read 
where I cast my first anchor.” And what did she 
read? The 17th of John. And why did he cast 
his first anchor there? Because of the day when 
he saw George Wishart burned at the stake,—and 
who was George Wishart? A man who carried on 
regular correspondence with the Almighty—daily, 
yes hourly, letters back and forth. The post office 
of prayer was busy. And had not John Knox read 
of that awful day when the plague lay over Scot- 
land? The people of Dundee saw it approach from 
the west in the form of a great black cloud. They 
fell on their knees and cried to the cloud to pass 
them by, but it came ever nearer. Then they looked 
around for the most holy man among them to inter- 
vene with God on their behalf. They wanted a 
holy man—somebody whose prayer handwriting 
God was acquainted with—somebody who didn’t 
have to be introduced to God. All eyes turned to 
George Wishart and he stood up, the old account 
tells us, stretching his arms to the cloud and prayed 
and it rolled back. Such was George Wishart and 
such was John Knox. “Go, read where I cast my 
first anchor.” The anchor of prayer. 

Next I call Chaplain McCabe of the Civil War 


24 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


days. He had proven God also and he knew. He 
was in Libby Prison, ill with typhoid fever. 
Major-General Powell sitting by his bedside said, 
“Chaplain, here is a letter for you—I will read it.” 
The letter was from Dr. Isaac Cook, a brother min- 
ister, telling the Chaplain that a session of the Con- 
ference had just been held. When McCabe’s name 
was called out, somebody answered “He is in 
Libby Prison.” The presiding Bishop reminded 
the Conference that Paul and Barnabas were 
prayed out of prison and suggested that prayer 
be offered for Chaplain McCabe. Two hundred 
and fifty preachers went down on their knees and 
asked for the release of their brother. McCabe 
said afterwards: “I was used to suffering and lone- 
liness but I wasn’t used to tenderness and that let- 
ter broke me down. The tears rolled down my 
cheeks like rain. As soon as I could control myself, — 
I began to sing. I broke into a profuse perspira- 
tion and the tide was turned. In the evening, the 
doctor came and felt my pulse and started back in 
surprise.” ‘Why,’ he said, “there’s a big change in 
you. That last medicine has helped you wonder- 
fully.” The recovery was rapid. Twelve days 
later, McCabe was informed he had been exchanged 
and was able to leave the hospital. Thus did God 
answer the prayers of that Methodist Conference in 
a wonderful way. 

Whom shall we call next? I see a Chinese con- 
vert with something on his mind. He doesn’t speak 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 25 


English very well—fact is his testimony consists 
of two words. A missionary has just asked him 
what remedy he found most effective in curing his 
countrymen of the opium habit, idolatry and other 
sins. He answered laconically “Knee Medicine.” 
Can you improve on that as a description of prayer? 
It is knee medicine. Tradition tells us that after St. 
James had died, those who were preparing his 
body for burial found that his knees had great 
calluses on them like a camel’s, as a result of his 
much kneeling in prayer. “Knee medicine’ had 
been balm and healing to his soul. 

For a fourth witness I call Henry M. Stanley, the 
great African explorer. He was one of the hardest- 
headed men of his generation. He admitted he had 
scoffed at prayer and called it children’s food, but 
later his eyes were opened and his opinions changed. 
Here is a statement verbatim from his hand: “I 
have evidence, satisfactory to myself, that prayers 
are granted. By prayer, the road sought for has 
become visible and the danger immediately lessened, 
not once or twice or thrice but repeatedly, until the 
cold, unbelieving heart was impressed. When I 
have been earnest I have been answered.” 

May I summon Abraham Lincoln as our last wit- 
ness on this point? In the darkest hour of the 
nation’s history, Bishop Simpson called upon him. 
He said, “Bishop, I feel the need of prayer. Will 
you pray with me?” The two men fell on their 
knees before God and implored His help. Audible 


26 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


“Amens” were uttered by Lincoln while the Bishop 
was praying. He said he felt confident that things 
would go all right at Gettsyburg. He said to Gen- 
eral Sickles, “I told God if we were to win the 
battle, He must do it, for I had done all I could. I 
told Him this was His war and our cause was His 
cause.’ Then having put the whole matter in the 
Lord’s hand, he admits that confidence and peace 
came to him. Well, what do you think of the evi- 
dence presented by these witnesses? Don’t you 
think itis rather strong? It certainly is sincere. A 
man might be mistaken once or twice. There might 
be a number of coincidences or accidental combina- 
tions of events. But when repeatedly throughout a 
long life one receives evidences of God’s open ear 
and kindly hand, one is justified in drawing out 
of these scattered experiences a general law and 
that law would be—God answers prayer. 


II. It Can Be Proved That God Answers Prayer 
From The Statements of Holy Scripture: 


I have read of one good man who had his Bible 
all marked up. Every now and then on the margin 
after some precious promise one would find the 
letters T. P. On inquiring what they meant, one 
was informed that they signified “Tried and 
proved.” That’s what God challenges the people to 
do through the prophet Malachi. ‘‘Prove me now 
herewith” saith the Lord. So the Bible promises 
to prayer are a challenge, a defiance, if you please. 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 27 


They are like so many signed checks with the 
amount filled in but the name left blank and we are 
to fill in our own names and see if they will not be 
honored. We ought to cash in on some of the 
Scripture promises to praying souls. If we believe 
the Bible, to see the promise resting there in God’s 
great check-book will be enough; but if we do not 
accept the Bible, we can test the value of the check 
in Olir own experience by presenting it at the win- 
dow of everyday life, to be honoured. 

Begin, if you will, with the first books of Scrip- 
ture and how many proofs of prayer you have. 
Abraham prayed for a son and God gave him a 
posterity more numerous than the stars. He 
prayed for Ishmael and God spared the boy’s life 
and made of him a great nation. He prayed for 
Sodom and God graciously heard his cry. Jacob 
prayed for a favourable reception by his brother, 
Esau, and the reconciliation of the men was his 
answer. Moses prayed for the forgiveness of his 
people at the time of their rebellion. Joshua prayed 
about Ai. Gideon prayed about the Midianites. 
Samuel prayed about the loss of the ark. Elijah 
prayed for the fire from heaven and the wonder- 
ful scene at Mt. Carmel was the answer. Jonah 
cried to the Lord and He heard him out of the 
depth of the sea. Nineveh, that great ancient city, 
had a season of humiliation and prayer when sen- 
tence of doom was pronounced against it and you 
remember how God heard its cry and spared it. In 


28 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


fact it has been said that in all Scripture there is but 
one instance of prayer conjoined with fasting that 
failed to secure the desired result and that was when 
David pleaded for the son of his adulterous union. 
But in every other case—even the wicked King 
Ahab—God graciously heard and answered prayer. 

When you come over to the New Testament, 
you stand face to face with the great Pray-er of all 
history. It has been said of Him: “Jesus of Naz- 
areth came out of eternity, a great praying soul.” 
His whole life was a constant communion with 
God. He tells us to pray henceforth in His name 
and that whatever we ask the Father, He will do. 
The early church was born in a prayer meeting and 
baptised in an atmosphere of intercession. There 
are 30,000 promises in the Bible, most of which 
are connected with prayer. All of the seven great 
universal promises, wrapped around such words as 
“whosoever” and ‘whatsoever’ are made to praying 
souls. It looks as though God can afford to be ex- 
travagant when He speaks of prayer because He 
knows its wondrous power. Dr. Fosdick says some- 
where something like this: “If a thing can be done, 
reason and common sense can do it; but if a thing 
cannot be done, only faith can do it.” And the 
Bible proves that faith has done the impossible 
time and again. The Chinese have a kind of par- 
able in the architectural beauty of the pagoda as 
it rises heavenward; for the character for the 
word, pagoda, is composed of two elements which 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 29 


signify respectively, “earth” and “answer.” So it 
is that earth reaches up its hand and heaven 
answers, according to the witness of Scripture. 


III. It Can Be Proved That God Answers 
Prayer From a Siudy of Religious Biography: 


The giants of prayer are not all dead. When we 
read in Scripture “there were giants in those days” 
we are wont to think that the pyramid souls have 
all passed away. But not so—we can find in con- 
temporary history as well as in posthumous biog- 
raphy cases of marvelous answer to prayer. Take 
for example the “Prayer Farm” of Bucks County, 
Pennsylvania. Dr. Albert Oecetinger established 
some twenty years ago an institution which he 
called the “Principality of Great Faith,” starting 
out with nothing but a bucket, a broom, a prayer 
and a Bible. Since that time neither he nor his 
assistants have asked any living mortal for aid. 
The official title of the institution is “Christ’s 
Home for Homeless and Destitute Children.” 
There are over two hundred needy children and 
some fifty workers living in this prayer-guided 
community. The methods of the place are prac- 
tical and feasible. Three times each day, at sun- 
rise, noon and sunset, the children and workers 
sink to their knees and lay their needs before God 
in prayer. First, the Prayer-Master compiles a 
list of the needs of the Prayer-farm. These in- 
clude food and clothing for the inmates, harness 


30 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


for the horses, feed for the chickens and so on. 
They pray for only a day’s supply at a time. 

Has the plan worked? Does God answer prayer 
in the twentieth century or did He quit doing so 
when the Bible was closed? Here is the answer, ac: 
cording to the Master. They have prayed into ex- 
istence a farm of one hundred and forty-four acres 
with up-to-date barns and equipment, daily sus- 
tenance for their colony of two hundred and fifty 
persons, a complete equipment for the quarrying of 
stone, a water supply system costing $2700, a boys’ 
and a girls’ dormitory, three schools, a chapel, a 
print shop, a modern bakery, cows, horses, chickens, 
etc. Dr. Oetinger says that prayer is answered in 
very marvelous ways. Once when they were 
obliged to kill four of their horses because of old 
age they earnestly asked God to replace them be- 
cause they were so sorely needed. Within one week 
God put it into the heart of a person unknown to 
them to send them four horses. Similarly they 
asked for a printing press, a Ferguson stitcher and 
a boiler and the answers came. When we read 
accounts like this we are tempted to disbelieve 
them, but that is simply because we do not meet 
the conditions of true prayer as these simple be- 
lievers of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, have done. 
How true it is as somebody has said, that if there 
should arise one utterly believing man, the history 
of the world might be changed; for “nothing lies 
beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? § 31 


outside the will of God.’’ That’s why all things 
are possible to him that believeth, for the believer 
will only desire those things which lie within the 
circle of the will of God. 

The famous Ashley Down Orphanage of Bristol, 
England, founded by George Muller, that wonder- 
ful specialist in prayer, is run on principles very 
much like the Pennsylvania home just referred to. 
In one of their annual reports they say that never 
during the year did they come to the bottom of 
the barrel, but they came within a few days of it 
at one period. Yet God honoured their faith and 
gave them that year an income of over $164,000. 
The total income since the beginning of the work 
has been somewhere between ten and fifteen mil- 
lions of dollars—all received in answer to prayer. 
Pastor Gosner was another man acquainted with 
God—another one of God’s favourites so to speak, 
for he prayed out into the foreign field 144 mis- 
sionaries, with their passage and support, hospitals 
for them to work in, etc. When one reads of these 
giant souls and their victories on the battlefield of 
prayer one realizes that these men themselves are 
not accomplishing these incredible things—how 
could they?—but that God is working through 
them. And this fits in entirely with this new defi- 
nition of prayer. “Prayer is man giving God a 
footing on the contested territory of this earth.” 


IX. 


HOW TO OBTAIN VICTORY IN PRAYER. 


ent people. Prayer to some people is a 
luxury; they use it as they do their good 
china, on rare occasions, when the minister comes 
and the like. Prayer to some others is a necessity 
—they would no more think of doing without it 
than without food—they employ it as an everyday 
commodity. Prayer to some again is a duty, they 
go to prayer with as much delight as to the medi- 
cine closet; to them it is bitters, not candy. Prayer 
to others again is an emergency article—they use 
it like a life-preserver only when the ship is going 
down. Prayer to still others is a form; they re- 
peat words with as much enthusiasm as they do 
the table of tens or the exciting alphabet—it is mere 
gymnastics for the lips and they hope to be heard 
for their much vocal exercise. But whatever prayer 
may be to you or to others or to me, for most 
people, I’m afraid, it is a failure. They say “We 
pray and we don’t get anywhere. Why doesn’t it 
mean more to us?” That is the question we want 
to try to answer now. 
There are certain conditions of success in prayer, 
just as there are everywhere else in life. Prayer 


32 


P ee p00 means different things to differ- 


i 





ts 
1a, 
re 


VICTORY IN PRAYER St) 


isn’t a fetish or a bit of magic; it is an art or a 
science whose laws must be mastered. It isn’t a 
mechanical thing like touching a button and flood- 
ing the room with electricity. It is a contact be- 
tween two personalities and that can never be me- 
chanical. It is a personal performance. Scripture 
says: “He that cometh to God must believe that 
He is” first of all. You never go to meet a fence- 
post—you always make an engagement with some- 
body and it is the height of folly to make an ap- 
pointment to meet God in prayer, if there is no God 
anywhere to meet. You never ring the telephone 
number just for exercise—you do it to talk to 
somebody and if you sit there talking away at the 
little metal disk, you are a fool. So prayer presup- 
poses God beyond the disk, beyond the cloud and 
this God will talk back to you; He is the Answerer, 
the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 
The Cretans of old were very foolish people for 
they painted their Jupiter without either eyes or 
ears and this is the sort of prayer they made to 
him: ‘“O God, whosoever thou art, for whether 
thou art or who thou art, we know not.” As 
though they said, “Hello, nobody, I want to talk 
to you.” Heine said nobody but a fool expects an 
answer to prayer and I reply, nobody but a fool 
talks into space without expecting an answer to his 
plea. 





34 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


{. The First Essential Then of Victorious 
Prayer 1s Faith in God: 


“He that cometh to God must believe that He 
is.”’ Some time ago I preached a sermon over the 
wireless and then offered prayer. The operator 
said to me in effect, “Now the people are there—at 
the other end of our wave length—you preach to 
the mouthpiece and your words will be carried to 
the waiting multitudes.’ I consented to speak out 
into space believing in the people whom I did 
not see. He that preacheth to the people whom 
he sees not must believe that they are. What a 
senseless performance it would have been other- 
wise. I should have been indicted for murder, for 
killing time. 

You see, then, what unbelief does—it burns 
down the bridge across which my soul would 
march to God. It dynamites the receiver at the 
other end of my telephone wire, so that there is 
no listening ear. It introduces me to a wax figure 
so that I’m standing all alone in the universe of 
space, flinging out my petitions to a hypothesis or 
a question mark. How can two objects carry on 
a conversation, one of which is a person and the 
other a wooden figure dressed up to look like a 
man? I don’t see the use of shouting Hallelujah 
to the atmosphere. What’s the object of singing 
anthems to the Great Unknown? One astronomer 
said he had turned his glass to all quarters of the 


VICTORY IN PRAYER 51) 


starry heavens and had never been able to locate 
God yet. You would never catch such a man at 
prayer. He that cometh to God must believe that 
He is. You never go to a vacant house to make a 
call—why pray to a vacant and empty heavenr 
Give me a tenant in my house of faith and then 
T’ll ring the doorbell; otherwise I'll pass it by. 
Faith then is the agency which puts a tenant in the 
house in the sky. Faith fills in the empty void with 
an almost human Face. Faith calls up the great 
Central at the Station called “yonder” and hears 
a response, while Unbelief standing by, smiles in 
pity. Faith says it’s possible to carry on a real 
conversation when the soul speaks and God listens, 
though human lips be silent and human ears catch 
no sound. 

Prof. Tyndall wrote of Michael Faraday, after 
coming from a dinner at which Faraday had asked 
the blessing, “He said grace. I am almost 
ashamed to call his prayer spoken. We would 
rather call it the imploring of a son who prays in 
perfect faith for the blessing of the Father.” 
Some time ago in a London hospital, a little girl 
was taken into the operating room. As she stood 
beside the operating table the doctors and nurses 
told her they must put her to sleep before they 
could make her better. “Well, if you are going to 
put me to sleep, | must say my prayers” was the 
innocent answer. Then kneeling down beside the 


36 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


operating table she joined her little hands and 
prayed: 


“This mght I lay me down to sleep, 

I pray the Lord my soul to keep; 

If I should die before I wake, 

I pray the Lord, my soul to take; 

And this I ask for Jesus’ sake. AMEN.” 


When she finished, the eyes of the doctors and 
nurses were full of tears. The head surgeon went 
home to pray for the first time in thirty years. 


II. I Name as a Second Essential of Victorious 
Prayer, the Attitude of Expectancy: 


The way some people pray reminds me of a 
man who goes to a cashier’s window with a check 
to be honoured and after passing the same to the 
cashier, turns and walks away leaving the money 
to be paid to somebody else or to be put back in 
the cash drawer. It is as though one should 
call up a dear friend on the phone and then go 
away and leave the receiver down and immerse 
himself in other details, forgetting all about the 
pleading voice trying to speak to him. It is as 
though one should write a letter to a friend and 
then forbid the postman to ever deliver any mail 
in reply. It’s like a man opening his windows 
toward Jerusalem long enough to send in his peti- 
tion and then saying to the maid, “If anybody calls 
me from Jerusalem, [’m out.” 


VICTORY IN PRAYER ot 


One reason we hate to disappoint our children on 
Christmas morning is because of the attitude of 
expectancy which is in the air. If nobody was ex- 
pecting any presents and everybody got up on 
Christmas morning and went to his work just as 
usual, I don’t know whether we would trouble our- 
selves very much about providing gifts. Now, do 
you find much of a Christmas morning face in the 
average prayer meeting? Isn’t it true that we act 
as if we did not expect God to answer our prayers? 
We act as if prayer always purchased a one-way 
ticket instead of a round trip. We say “Goodbye, 
requests, we never expect to see you again.” You 
have often heard the story of the old lady who 
asked the Lord one night to remove an unsightly 
hill which obstructed her view, and in the morn- 
ing she arose and looked out of the window and 
said, “There the old thing is, just as I expected.” 

You have the same thing in that prayer meet- 
ing described in the Twelfth Chapter of Acts. The 
people were praying for Peter’s release from pris- 
on and when their prayers were answered and 
Peter knocked at the door, Rhoda recognized his 
voice and came back and told them Peter was there 
and they said, “You're crazy—it must be his 
ghost.” They were shocked beyond measure at 
the mere suggestion that God had answered their 
prayers. Wiser was the little boy who asked that 
prayer be offered for his sister that God would put 
it into her heart to read her Bible, for then he 


38 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


thought she would be converted. When the 
prayer began to be offered for his sister, he got up 
and left the meeting. The next time he came one 
of the workers reproached him for his rudeness, 
but he explained that he had no intention of being 
rude—he just wanted to run right home and see 
what it looked like to see his sister reading her 
Bible for the first time. That’s the attitude of ven- 
ture and expectation which our Lord delights in. 
You see it so often in His miracles of healing. He 
says to the man with the withered hand, ‘Stretch 
it out.” He tells the paralytic, “Take up your bed 
and walk.” He says to the disciples helpless be- 
fore the multitude, ‘Give ye them to eat.” So al- 
ways he expects men to step out on His promises, 
expecting something to happen. This willingness 
to venture out expectantly is what we call faith. 
As Donald Hankey put it, “Faith is betting your 
life that there is a God.” 


“Thou art coming to a King; 
Large petitions with thee bring; 
For His grace and power are such 
None can ever ask too much.” 


ITI. J Name as a Third Essential of Victorious 
Prayer, the Genius of Perseverance and Persist- 
ence: 

It is rather significant that our Lord immedi- 
ately after the giving of the model prayer (in St. 


VICTORY IN PRAYER ao 


Luke’s account) gives the parable of the importu- 
nate friend. It looks as though Jesus picked out 
for primary mention the one place where petitioners 
most often fail—that of stick-at-it-iveness. Christ 
tells the story of the man who came at midnight to 
borrow three loaves of bread. His neighbour feels 
like calling the police probably, but he wants to stop 
that infernal knocking and so because of the man’s 
perseverance, he rises and gives him his desire. 

Once more our Lord recurs to the same theme— 
in the story of the Unjust Judge. This jurist ad- 
mits that he fears neither God nor man and yet he 
is frightened by a poor widow. How is that? 
Simply because he is afraid of the woman’s perse- 
verance. He says, “I’m going to grant her re- 
quest, lest by her continual coming she weary me.” 
And so it looks as though God expects us to be re- 
peaters in prayer. He wants us to underscore our 
petition, to put it in italics, to advertise before Him 
our needs, to continually call His attention to our 
bill of desires. 

Dr. Charles Wood suggests that the phone some- 
times gives one or two rings and quits and we say, 
“Oh well, if it is anything important, they will 
call again. Nobody who amounts to anything 
would quit as soon as that.” But sometimes there 
comes a long distance call when the bell rings with 
a persistency which brooks no denial and then we 
answer, lest by its continual ringing it get on our 
nerves. 


40 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


May there not be a suggestion here about our 
prayers? When we ring the phone bell of prayer, 
don’t we often run away before God gets time 
to answer? George Muller, that apostle of persis- 
tent prayer, gave five reasons why he prayed as he 
did and one of them was this: “I have continued 
in believing prayer for over fifty-two years and 
shall so continue until the answer is given.” When- 
ever the Lord showed Muller it was His will he 
should pray, he continued to ask till the answer 
came. He thought the object of prayer was 
an answer, not just an exercise for the lips. 
Charles M. Alexander, the Gospel singer, tells how 
he stood one day at a bank counter in Liverpool, 
England, waiting for a clerk to come. He picked 
up a pen and began to print on a blotter in large 
letters “Pray through.” He kept talking to a 
friend and writing until he had the big blotter filled 
from top to bottom with a column. He transacted 
his business and went away. The next day his 
friend came to see him and said he had a striking 
story to tell him. A business man soon after Alex- 
ander left came into the bank. He had grown dis- 
couraged with business troubles and when his eye 
caught the message of the blotter he said, “That’s 
the very message I needed. I will pray through. 
I have tried to worry through in my own strength 
and have merely mentioned my troubles to God. 
Now I am going to pray the matter through till I 
get light.” So it is that in Alexander’s Gospel 


VICTORY IN PRAYER 41 


Hymns you will find one, doubtless suggested by 
this incident, entitled, “Don’t Stop Praying,” which 
begins like this: 


“Dowt stop praying! The Lord is nigh; 
Don't stop praying! He'll hear your cry; 
God has promised and He ts true, 

Don't stop praying! He'll answer you.” 


IV. I Name as a Fourth Essential of Victorious 
Prayer the Substitution of God’s Will For Ours: 


People sometimes lose confidence in prayer be- 
cause they say they ask for a thing repeatedly and 
do not get it. Well, what is the object of prayer 
anyhow? ‘There is great misunderstanding at this 
point. Is prayer meant to be a sort of delivery 
wagon to deposit at our door the things we order 
over the long distance telephone? Or is it meant 
to be a tuning process by which we tune our souls 
up till they are in key with God, after which we 
hold our hands out to receive what He thinks best? 
Is prayer demand or petition? Is the prayer-room 
a restaurant where we order what we want, or is 
it a hospital where sick souls receive the treatment 
the Great Physician thinks best? 

‘Let us put the question this way. There are two 
instruments to be tuned in key with each other, a 
pipe organ anda violin. It’s a great task to change 
the pitch of the organ but a simple one to tune the 
violin. Now God represents the organ and we 


42 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


represent in insignificance the violin. Which shalf 
we do? How shall we get the two together? Shall 
we tune the great organ down to the pitch of the 
violin? Or shall we tune the little violin up to the 
pitch of the organ? One must give in—which shall 
it be? Must God accommodate His will to ours or 
shall we change ours to meet His? Why, of course, 
if He is our gracious and loving and all-wise Father 
we shall say, Take our little instrument and bend its 
pitch to Thine. 

Hear the words of St. John’s Epistle :—“This 
is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we 
ask anything according to His will, He heareth us.” 
That’s it. God is not like a telephone girl who 
guarantees to connect us with whatever blessing 
we ask instanter. Not at all. He is a Father who 
hears His children’s foolish requests patiently and 
then does what He thinks best. 

You recall the Greek story of Phaeton: A 
Greek youth once claimed to be the child of the 
sun-god and was jeered at by his fellows. He 
asked his mother for proof of his heavenly birth. 
She told him to travel to the East to the palace of 
the stun and ask to be owned as a son. Going to 
the palace he said, “O my father, give me some 
proof that Iam your son.” The sun acknowledged 
his claim and told him to ask any favour desired. 
The youth demanded to be allowed to drive the 
chariot of the sun. The father shook his head 
and begged the boy to give over his request, but 


VICTORY IN PRAYER 43 


the lad insisted, and so, holding his father to his 
promise, he sprang into the seat of the chariot. 
He was so unused, however, to the managing of 
the horses that they ran away and he was thrown 
from his seat into the River Po and was drowned. 
Such might be the result of our selfish prayers 
many times—they would be our own undoing. 

Phillips Brooks has a very wise word on the 
function of prayer. “Prayer,” he says, “is not a 
conquering of God’s reluctance, but a laying hold 
of God’s willingness.”’ That is a wise word. God 
is not a passive indifferent Will needing to be 
aroused to activity, but an active Will desirous of 
filling His children with blessings if they will open 
up the obstructing gates between His infinite reser- 
voir and their empty souls. “Delight thyself in 
the Lord (i. e. tune yourself to His key) and He 
shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” 


IV. 
IS IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 


E LIVE ina very practical age. People do 

things in the twentieth century not be- 

cause the law compels them to, but because 
they “get something out of it” worth while. One 
of the mottoes of the day is ““Where do we come 
inon this?’ ‘What is there init for us?’ We're 
willing to invest our money if we get some returns 
worth while. We’re glad to try this doctor you 
recommend, if his treatment brings improvement. 
Is the game worth the candle?—that’s the query. 
We want compound interest on our time and 
trouble—6% won’t do any more. We want the 
name on the dotted line and Q.E.D. at the bottom 
of the page. 

It is not to be wondered at that the same prag- 
matic spirit creeps into our religion. You say I 
ought to tithe my income—well, what returns do 
I get if I do? You say I ought to observe the 
Sabbath day—well, what dividends are declared 
to Sabbath observers? You say I ought to read 
the Bible—well, what good will it do me to do so? 
You say I ought to pray—well, what does prayer 
accomplish that makes it worth while to pray? 


44 





IS If WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 45 


This is the question we seek to answer. If we can 
answer it satisfactorily, it may help others to pray. 

Let us get one thing clear at the outset. We do 
not have to comprehend a process in order to enjoy 
its results. I do not understand electricity but I 
take the car downtown just the same. I do not 
understand the mechanism of the telephone but 
I’ve learned that by calling a certain number I 
get my friend and so I call him up and talk to him 
over an avenue I cannot see. I do not understand 
the anatomy of the body and yet I use the doctor’s 
medicine because it has helped the pain before and 
it knows where to go though I cannot tell it. So 
I may use prayer because of its proven helpful- 
ness though I cannot understand all its mysteries. 
If I never used an elevator till I comprehended it 
I would stay downstairs all my life. If I never 
used an auto till I could make one I should be a 
confirmed pedestrian. If I never pray till all my 
queries are satisfied I shall be a stranger to God. 
Charles Edward Jefferson says, “(Nobody knows 
what takes place when we drop a lump of sugar 
into a cup of coffee. Whether the change is 
mechanical or chemical the wisest men cannot say. 
For most of us it is enough to know that the coffee 
is sweetened. So we know that by dropping a 
prayer into a day we sweeten its hours. Why 
should we not be as practical in our religion as 
we are at the dinner table ?”’ 

Now prayer does accomplish results. It has 


46 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


been well said that every prayer-action is in doubles, 
a lower human level and an upper spiritual level. 
We are thinking about the lower level, the accom- 
plishments of prayer that we can touch and hear 
and see. Two men were saying good-bye. One 
remarked, “I don’t see as much of you as I’d like 
to; but I think of you and am interested in you and 
your work and I pray for you constantly.” The 
other replied with moistened eye, ‘Whatever you 
do, don’t forget to ring the sky-bells for me.” 
Now our question is, what reactions and echoes 
do the sky-bells have on earth? 


I. Prayer Produces Peace of Mind. 


Here is one place where psychologists and theo- 
logians and physicians, warriors and Scripture all 
agree. Paul said it first, I suppose, when he wrote 
to the Philippians. Here is the way he put it: 
“In nothing be anxious, but by prayer and suppli- 
cation let your requests be made known unto God. 
And the peace of God which passeth all understand- 
ing shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in 
Christ Jesus.” Here Paul represents prayer as 
a sentinel on guard—he has built a rampart or wall 
of defense around the thoughts of the praying 
soul and these enemies which we call anxiety 
and fear can’t get in. 

Well, Dr. Hyslop, the noted alienist said the 
same thing. He spoke as Superintendent of the 
Bethlehem Royal Hospital to the British Medical 


Is IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 47 


Association at their annual meeting in 1905, and 
he said this: “As an alienist and one whose whole 
life has been concerned with the sufferings of the 
mind, I would state that of all hygienic measures 
to counteract disturbed spirits, I would undoubt- 
edly give the first place to the simple habit of 
prayer.” Professor James speaks along the same 
line. He holds that prayer as an act of the soul 
sets in operation hidden forces both within and 
without ourselves. Thus, instead of being an act 
of weakness, prayer is the divinely ordained method 
by which we may utilize spiritual forces which 
operate in harmony with fixed laws as invariable 
as the laws of nature. But someone may say, 
This is all well enough to theorise about but have 
we any practical proof of it? Yes, we have of 
the strongest sort. Anybody who was at the front 
during the great war knows what a calming power 
was prayer. It was the best possible treatment for — 
shell-shock, for example. 

One Christian worker went to a hospital over 
there one Sunday evening to hold a service with 
the men suffering from shock who couldn’t leave 
their ward to come to the regular service. He 
told them the simple story of how Christ calmed 
the storm on the Sea of Galilee so long ago and 
then in a simple prayer asked the same Christ to 
still the trembling tongues and limbs of these lads 
and to bring a great sense of peace and quiet to 
their hearts. When the speaker looked up from 


48 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


his prayer, he found to his surprise that the trem- 
bling of the boys had perceptibly ceased. There 
was a great sense of peace and quiet in the ward. 
The nurse told him next day that the boys had an 
unusually quiet night. A medical friend said to 
him, “After all, maybe your medicine is best.” 
Yes, his medicine, knee-medicine as the Chinese 
convert called it, was best. 

It is easy to see why Prayer and Peace are first. 
cousins. When we pray we turn our eyes away 
from our own little buzzing circus of confusion 
to the great calm of the heart of God—we gear 
our souls up to a pace that is slow and sweet—we 
put a governor on the machinery that slows down 
its fevered pace until we possess our souls in 
patience and peace. 


“The little sharp vexations, 
And the briars that catch and fret, 
Why not take all to the Helper 
Who has never failed us yet? 
Tell Him about the heartache, 
And tell Him the longings, too; 
Tell Him the baffled purpose 
When we scarce know what to do. 
Then leaving all our weakness 
With One divinely ‘strong, 
Forget that we bore the burden, 
And carry away the song.” 


Is IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 49 


II. J Name as a Second Reason Which Makes 
It Worth While to Pray, Tius: Prayer Revives the 
Christian Life: 

I wish Jesus might come back to earth just for 
a few days and hold a great world-wide exami- 
nation class to which all the Christians living on 
earth today might be summoned and at which they 
might be graded as to percentage of efficiency and 
success in their Christian life. How many do you 
suppose would get a passing mark? How many 
would Jesus grade at 75%? How many at 507? 
Would not many of us be glad to get even a 25% 
grade? One of the surprises of the twentieth 
century would be the results of such an assize. 

Do you know the main thing Christ would con- 
demn? I fancy it would be the low spiritual state 
resulting from the disuse of prayer. It has been 
said that every great revival movement of history, 
where God’s people have been stirred up to take 
hold of Him, has resulted from a renewal of the 
prayer-life. It was so away back in the days of 
Ezra, for we read that when Ezra had prayed and 
confessed, there assembled unto him a great con- 
gregation and the result was the revival at the 
Water-gate. It was so at Pentecost—they con- 
tinued in prayer and supplication and suddenly 
there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing 
mighty wind. It has been so in modern times. 
Look at the situation at the outbreak of the eight- 
eenth century. In Germany, France and England 


50 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


unbelief was rampant. Blackstone, the legal com- 
mentator, went the rounds from church to church 
till he had heard every clergyman of note in London 
and his sad testimony was that in not one of them 
had he found more Christianity than in the writ- 
ings of Cicero, nor could he gather whether the 
preacher was a disciple of Confucius, Mahomet, 
Zoroaster or Christ. 

And yet, out of this darkness came the revivals 
of Whitefield and Wesley and the birth of the 
Methodist Church. But these great events were 
preceded by days and nights of prayer. About 
1750, Jonathan Edwards sent out his famous 
trumpet call to prayer, in which he refers to the day 
of fasting and prayer, observed the year previous 
at Northampton which was followed that same 
night by the utter dispersion of the French 
Armada. History tells us that several members 
of Edwards’ church spent the whole night in 
prayer, the night before he preached his memorable 
sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” 
The Holy Spirit was so manifested during the 
preaching of that sermon that the elders threw 
their arms around the pillars of the church and 
cried, “Lord, save us, we are slipping down to 
hell.” 

When Charles G. Finney roused the dormant 
church by his tremendous spiritual power, the 
power behind the throne was a praying man, an 
invalid, whom Finney carried with him from place 


Is IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 51 


to place. This man never appeared in public, but 
his room at the hotel became a very Bethel, a house 
of God, from which the voice of petition continu- 
ally ascended. An incident is given in the life of 
Finney which shows some of the mysterious power 
resident in a life which is bombarded with prayer. 
Finney was visiting one of the factories in New 
York. As he drew near the place he saw two girls 
trying to mend a thread. They laughed in his face. 
As he drew nearer they began to cry and could not 
go on with their work because of their trembling 
hands. As the man of God went nearer still they 
sank down on the seats before him, while the tears 
rolled down their faces. Others were touched by 
the sight. The proprietor of the mill who was 
present, though not a Christian, said to the super- 
intendent: “Stop the mill; it is more important 
that souls should be saved than that the factory 
should run.”” The work was stopped and a great 
meeting was held that day with three to four hun- 
dred souls crying, ‘“God be merciful to us, sinners.” 


“Oh, that 1t now from heaven might fall 
And all our sins consume! 
Come, Holy Ghost, for Thee we call, 
Spirit of burning, come.” 


All of you will remember the great Welsh Re- 
vival in 1903. It had its origin in prayer. Evan 
Roberts entered into a solemn covenant with a few 
others that he would spend a whole day once a 


52 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


month in prayer for a revival of God’s work in 
Wales. Busy as he was, he kept his pledge and 
within two years one of the mightiest revivals in 
all history swept over Wales. And as the move- 
ment grew in power and numbers the one thing 
that Roberts seemed to fear was that popularity 
would make an idol of him and he would be the 
center of attraction instead of Christ. 

Similar things are recorded of humbler and less- 
known men. Ina church in Scotland some years 
ago the pastor suddenly began to preach with un- 
precedented power. The congregation was aroused 
and sinners were saved. The minister himself did 
not understand the new enduement; but in a dream 
of the night it was suggested to him that the whole 
blessing was due to a poor old woman who was 
stone deaf, but who came regularly to church and 
being unable to hear a word, spent all the time in 
prayer for the preacher and individual hearers. 

It all comes back to what John R. Mott once 
said—that as he traveled around the world he 
never yet had seen a movement of real spiritual 
power that did not root itself in prayer. Some 
poor man cried and the Lord heard him and sent 
showers of abundance of rain. 


Ill. Tis Brings Us to the Third Reason Why 
Prayer Is Worth While: It Puts Over Against 
the Burdens of Life the Infinite Grace of God: 


Robert Speer tells about a little girl who was 


IS IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 53 


trying to move a large table. Her mother said, 
‘Dearie, you can’t move that table; why, it’s as 
big as you are.” To which her reply was, “Yes 
I can, for I’m as big as it is.” It all depends on 
which way you look at it. So when you face 
your burden, it all depends on the dimensions of 
your God whether He is as big as the Burden is, 
or whether the Burden is as big as God is. 

Now we all have our crosses. There’s a ceme- 
tery in every garden. Gethsemane and Calvary 
are not merely historic names of the first century, 
but facts of everyday life. People have got to 
have some refuge, somebody to turn to. As Robert 
Burns wrote so long ago: 


“When ranting around in pleasure’s ring, 

Religion may be blinded; 

Or if she gie a random sting, 
It may be little minded; 

But when in life we’re tempted, driven, 
A conscience but a canker— 

A correspondence fixed wi Heaven 

Is sure a noble anchor!” 


Notice how David fell back upon his corre- 
spondence with heaven in the midst of his trouble 
with Absalom. You find this in Psalms 4 and 3; 
Psalm 4 possibly being composed in the evening 
and Psalm 3 the following morning. In the last 
verse of Psalm 4 you have the original of “Now 
I lay me down to sleep,” for the king says, “In 


54. SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


peace will I lay me down and sleep, for Thou, Lord, 
makest me to dwell in safety.’ Here he resolves 
to lie down and sleep and in the third Psalm we 
find he says he did sleep—he lay down and slept 
and awoke, for the Lord sustained him. No in- 
somnia or anxiety for the man who puts God in 
the balance over against the burdens of life, by 
prayer. Prayer is the lever that lifts the weight 
and I know of no other hoisting machine that 
does it half so well. 

I venture all of us have had the experience of 
being driven by our burdens to the feet of God 
because we had nowhere else to go with them. 
And prayer, though so long neglected, proved a 
very present help in time of trouble. 

There is a real lesson for us all in the remark 
of the poor scrub woman in the Frauenkirke in 
Copenhagen who was at work near Thorwaldsen’s 
famous figure of the risen Christ. A party of 
tourists stood before the famous masterpiece ad- 
miring its beauty when the servant said to them, 
“You will see Him best from your knees.” It is 
wise advice. It applies not only to the tourists 
in the cathedral but to all of us. We never get 
the proper dimensions of Christ, never see how 
tall He is till we see Him from our knees in prayer. 
And once on our knees we get a new perspective 
which shows how able He is to succour all who 
come to His throne. 


IS IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 55 


So I believe we all ought to enlarge our concepts 
of God’s power and magnify His name as the 
Psalmist told us to: “O magnify the Lord with 
me.” We keep harping on how big our problems 
and difficulties and trials and crosses are until we 
get things out of their true perspective. Prayer is 
a stabilizer, an adjusting agency to magnify the 
resources of God and to minimize the annoyances 
of earth. | 

When a certain group of men were discussing 
a proposal of work and were differing about large 
or small plans, one suggested that they pray about 
it. Another demurred saying that it was not a 
thing to pray about but to think out, and added 
that he had noticed that when men prayed about 
a thing, they seemed to lose all sense of caution 
and felt that they could do anything. For his part 
he did not want that spirit to lay hold of them. 
That was a striking testimony to the power of 
prayer—that it broadened the horizons of men 
and made them “smile to think God’s greatness 
flowed around their incompleteness, around their 
restlessness, His rest.” 


IV. I Mention One More Accomplishment of 
Prayer: It Binds The World Together In Chains 
of Love. 


Charles Lamb said you couldn’t hate a man 
when you really knew him and surely it is true 
that you can’t hate a world of folks whom you 


56 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


seek to find along the long avenues of prayer. 
The man who prays for others is like a kindly 
pilgrim starting out along the dark roads of earth’s 
want and need with the brightly burning lantern 
of love and sympathy in his hand, ferreting out 
whoever needs helping and blessing, letting the 
love-light shine on them for a while. Ruskin said 
that the deepest gulf which yawns between any two 
classes of men is the gulf which divides the pray- 
ing from the prayerless. One lives a provincial 
life shut up within his own needs, and the other 
live a cosmopolitan existence in touch with life at 
every point. The praying man can carry on his 
prayer list every philanthropist, every hospital, 
every missionary, every statesman. He makes 
evening and morning calls on the humble and the 
great, leaving his card at the throne of grace. 
Wonderful world traveler does he become, run- 
ning in an instant from north pole to south and 
eastern hemisphere to western. 

Robert Louis Stevenson was in the habit of 
having family prayers every evening at his home 
in Samoa. After the labours of the day were 
over, the war conch was sounded and the white 
members of the family took their places at one 
end of the long hall while the Samoans, men, 
women and children, trooped in through all the 
open doors, all moving quitely and dropping down 
in the wide semicircle on the floor. Then the brief 
solemn service of evening prayer was conducted 


IS IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 57 


by Tusitala, as Stevenson was called by the natives. 
So we, when we kneel to pray for others, summon 
whomsoever we will,—friend, relative, statesman, 
employer, pastor—whoever it may be, into the 
other end of the long hall of our petitions and 
there we bid them kneel while we help to lift the 
burdens of life. Would you join this company 
of praying souls who send their winged prayers 
by way of heaven to the man at the other end of 
life’s long hallway? Then begin today. 


“The camel at the close of day 
Kueels down upon the sandy plain 
To have hs burden lifted off, and rest to gain; 
My soul, thou too should’st to thy knees 
When daylight draweth to a close, 
And let thy Master lft thy load, and grant 
repose.” 


Vi 
HOW DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 


fy OW IS one of the biggest words in 
1 the English or any other language. 
Humanity is insatiably curious and we 
are not satisfied to see a thing done but we 
want to know how it is done. The little boy isn’t 
satisfied with the ticking of his watch but he pulls 
it to pieces because he wants to see how the wheels 
go round and where the “ticker” is. Some people 
are satisfied to glance at the watch to get the time, 
but the “how” people insist on going deeper. 
Some folks use the phone as a necessity, but others 
regard it a curiosity and pull it apart to see how 
it works. Most of us use the human body as a 
matter of course and let it go at that, but the sur- 
geon cuts it apart in the operating room to see how 
and where it’s pasted together. 

- Some people read the Bible just because their 
fathers did and ask no questions, but others in- 
sist on asking how it came to be and who handed 
it down to us. So it is that some use prayer con- 
ventionally as a handy article to have around and 
give it no more thought; but others insist on see- 
ing the wheels go round in prayer. They even 


58 





DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 59 


want to mount up to heaven and follow a prayer 
from the time it leaves the suppliant’s lips till 
the answer is delivered all tied up with a blue 
ribbon and they want to watch every step in the 
process, and every time the prayer turns a corner, 
ask God how. They constitute themselves the 
Official and Authoritative inspectors of the Prayer 
Route and they want to bring in a complete report. 
Humanity has commissioned them to find out and 
they must know—‘“‘Your Committee to find out 
how God answers Prayer beg leave to report as 
follows,” etc. Let me be your “How Committee,” 
your “Committee on Ways and Means” and 
while I pretend to no superior wisdom, I may be 
able to suggest two or three things in answer to 
the query of our topic. 


I. God Sometimes Answers Prayer Through 
The Individual Co-operation of the Praying Soul. 


I’m afraid too many of us when we take our 
problem to the Lord in prayer drop it down be- 
fore His throne and say in effect “Now I wash my 
hands of all responsibility—it is up to Him.” But 
that is to mistake the partnership of prayer. It is 
only the first step when we pray—only a begin- 
ning; the second step is to live and act in such a 
way as shall be conducive to the answering of our 
own petition. It has been well said that intelligent 
prayer for any blessing is a vow to God to work 
with Him for the blessing prayed for. Cardinal 


60 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


Newman put the same thought in this way— 
“Prayer is not so much the invoking God from 
heaven as the evoking of God within the soul.” 
We are not merely calling down supernatural 
energies from heaven, but we are also calling out 
spiritual energies from within ourselves. Paul 
told Timothy, you remember, “Stir into flame the 
gift of God which is in thee.” 

To take one or two commonplace illustrations: 
If a man prays God for health, he will naturally 
use every means he can to keep himself strong and 
well. Some folks seem to think that God’s rela- 
tion to man is that of a phenomenon to an autom- 
aton—as though God had some mysterious wand 
to wave over a sickroom while the patient himself 
neglected all co-operation. Not at all. Moody 
was once asked to pray for the recovery to health 
of a spiritual leader and he replied, “Not at all— 
it is no use to ask for him to be well as long as 
he insists on working eight or ten out of every 
seven days ina week.” Or again, if a man prays 
for the ability to win souls, he will naturally go 
out and do personal work. If a man prays for a 
job, he will read the Want Advertisement Column. 
If a man prays for a wife, he will go out and meet 
women socially—he won’t sit still and expect some 
lady to walk up to his door and say, “Good morn- 
ing, I’m your wife the Lord sent.” If a man prays 
for success in business, he will probably work 
early and late at his desk. So it is that real 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 61 


prayer is the expression of dominant desire and 
we naturally will offer ourselves to God as team- 
mates in the securing of the ends on which our 
soul is set. Let’s get rid of the idea of prayer as 
a one man car where God is conductor and motor- 
man and everything else. No, if God is at the 
front end of our life, leading us on, He wants us 
to be at the back end following where He goes. 
The great word for prayer is “we’’ and “He’’—the 
sword of the Lord and Gideon—that’s the sys- 
tem—God and I. George Meredith states the 
truth this way: “Who rises from his prayer a 
better man, his prayer is answered.” Peter Annet, 
one of the old Deists, used to say that praying 
‘men were like sailors who have cast anchor on a 
rock and who foolishly imagine that they are pull- 
ing the rock ot themselves when really they have 
all the while been pulling themselves to the rock. 
Well, no sane man agrees with him. No, the 
efforts the sailors make to reach the rock are their 
efforts at causing the result they have been pray- 
ing for. God usually works through means and 
very frequently the means is You. We call up 
God and ask for a thing and He replies in sub- 
stance, “You want that very much, do you?r— 
enough to pay for it? Very well then, pay the 
price and take it.” 

The old proverb says “No man ever became a 
saint in his sleep;’ and no man ever got his 
prayer answered merely by waving a magic 


62 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


plea before God’s face. Dr. Cuyler used to say 
that the prayer that influenced God must be a pre- 
paid prayer, by which he meant that if our peti- 
tion did not find its way to the Dead Letter Office, 
it must be because it had sufficient on it—it must 
be stamped with our own earnest efforts, aye even 
blood and tears. Listen to “Chinese” Gordon as he 
tells us how he prayed—he had some temptation, 
some adversary he was trying to conquer and he 
writes, ‘“My constant prayer is against Agag who 
is, Of course, here and as insinuating as ever.” 
But does he stop there? Did he suppose Agag 
would disappear as soon as he introduced him to 
God? No, for he writes again, “I had a terrible 
half-hour this morning, hewing Agag in pieces 
before the Lord.’”’ What was his idea of prayer? 
It was the true idea—that prayer is a fight for the 
power to see and the courage to do the will of 
God, as Fosdick says. “If any man is willing to do 
His will, he shall know.” 

During one of the dreadful plagues of the 
Middle Ages a certain city in Italy suffered greatly. 
The citizens held a special service of intercession 
in the great Cathedral. Everybody for miles 
around came and they spent a day of prayer. Near 
evening, an ascetic-looking man appeared in the 
doorway, bearing a hatchet. He was well known, 
for he had risked his own life often in the service 
of the plague-stricken. Up the crowded aisle he 
passed to the altar, above which there was a large 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? ~ 63 


picture of Christ. It was called “The Frowning 
Christ” as it showed the Saviour with anger on 
His brow. ‘To the surprise of all, the monk raised 
his hatchet and struck at the picture. Bit by bit he 
cut it away. All thought him crazy till they saw 
that beneath the picture he cut there was another. 
When he finished, there stood the face of the 
smiling and merciful Saviour. The acted parable 
awoke new hope in the hearts of the multitude, 
but its true meaning was emphasised by, the monk 
who cried in a loud voice: “The smiling Christ 
did not appear till the rubbish had been cleared 
away. It is too soon for you to pray. Go burn 
your rubbish and the plague will depart.” That 
night the city gleamed with fires and the plague 
departed. Prayer was answered when the people 
helped God. 


II. God Sometimes Answers Prayer by Secur- 
ing the Co-operation Not of the Suppliant But of 
Other Human Beings. 


God has a great company of willing spirits 
apparently awaiting His beck and call to run on 
errands of love and mercy. He does not send 
ravens to feed Elijah now; when Elijah gets sick 
in the twentieth century, God sends human ravens, 
if you please. He works through the inventions of 
science, through the ministries of friendship— 
in a thousand ways to accomplish His purpose. 
Here’s a vessel sailing out from Vancouver to the 


64 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


Orient. The Chinese coolies are holding a religious 
service below decks to insure the ship’s safety. 
They have a caldron filled with live coals; and 
forming a circle about it, they throw into it slips 
of paper with printed prayers, that the gods might 
sense in the rising smoke the desires of the 
devotees. Then they shoot off firecrackers to 
scare away the devils. While all this religious 
mummery is going on below decks, on the ship’s 
bridge stands the captain with his sextant, com- 
pass and wireless, who is really being used of God 
to answer the prayers of these coolies. What a 
picture this is of human life. Many people, like 
the ignorant Chinese on that boat, feel that if 
prayer 1s answered it must be done in some un- 
usual and outre way that has nothing to do with 
natural laws and common sense. And how often 
God answers our prayers by securing the normal 
and reasonable co-operation of those who, by their 
understanding of nature’s processes and their use of — 
available means will become answerers of prayer. 


“In yonder hovel lies a man 
On bed of rags too sick to work; 
But hear, behold he prays for aid; 
Then go, thy duty do not shirk. 


On yonder field of blood, a moan 
You hear from palid lips of pain. 
Behold the thirsty sailor prays; 
Obey thy orders once again. 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 65 


Behold a widow prays to God 
That her poor little ones be fed; 
Go, take to her thy Father’s bread, 
And know that thou art Spirit led. 


Behold, a sinner prays to God 

For Hs sweet peace and tender care; 
Go, say that ere a seeker calls, 

Our Father hears and answers prayer.” 


The beautiful fact is that God has a providen- 
tial control of all human lives. He is the man- 
ipulator of souls and the soul is the part of man 
that receives suggestions from outside itself and 
acts upon them. Hence a man may often do a 
thing as the result of some inner urge, feeling 
that he is doing it entirely on his own motion, 
when as a matter of fact his impulse was divinely 
born as the answer to the gentle pressure of God’s 
hand which was moved by the cry of His child. 
Thus the philanthropist instead of being a self- 
mover is moved upon. He is first passive and 
then active; passive, to hear the voice of God and 
then active to rise and do His will. Prayer be- 
comes a sort of triangular performance, origi- 
nating in the heart of the suppliant, moving to the 
ear of God, passing to the responding soul. 

The height of the triangle is the distance from 
man to God and the breadth of the triangle is 
the distance from man to man. Prayer and Work 
are inseparably joined in the bonds of holy mar- 


06 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


riage by the Most High and from this union there 
is no divorce. A Southerner was out with colored 
Sambo in a boat when a terrific storm came up. 
“Shall we row or pray?” asked the terror-stricken 
man. ‘“‘Massa,-let’s mix ’em’’ was the sensible 
reply. This reminds us of the two Scotch minis- 
ters who were caught in a gale on a Highland 
loch. Dr. Norman McLeod, who happened to be 
one of them, was a big, burly fellow, the other 
a thin, frail-looking brother. As the sudden 
mountain storm came up, the little man said to 
Dr. McLeod, “Brother, let us pray together.” 
“Na, na,” said the Highland boatman, “the wee 
one can pray, but the big maun tak’ an oar!’ 
That was a fine combination certainly of prayer 
and work. 


Ill. God Sometimes Answers Prayer by the Di- 
rect Action of His Will Where No Human Co- 
operation Can Be Seen. 


Two different ways of looking at prayer are 
exemplified by the two women who came to their 
pastor to settle a dispute. One of them said, 
“When I lose my thimble, I kneel down and ask 
God to direct me to the place where it may be 
found.” The other said she didn’t take this view 
of the function of prayer. “When I lose my 
thimble,” she said, “I ask God to teach me more 
orderly habits.’ There are the two views, one 
more mystical, the other more practical; the one 


DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 67 


expecting God to do it all, the other expecting 
man to carry his end of the load. We have just 
been saying that one can often trace the human 
co-operation which results in the answer. But 
now in our closing point we are saying that God 
sometimes answers prayer in such a way that His 
tracks are covered. We don’t see anybody pull- 
ing the wires and we become convinced that God 
can act immediately as well as mediately, 1. e., 
without or above means as well as through them. 

One objection that some people have to prayer 
is that in certain cases they are entirely helpless 
to effect any result—they can’t see any way out 
and hence they won’t insult God by asking Him 
to do the impossible. They forget that the things 
that are impossible with men are possible with 
God and that there are many more strings in 
God’s fingers that He can pull than we can pos- 
sibly see. Look at Elijah—what could he do to 
unlock the heavens after three and a half years 
of drought? Certainly no human help could avail 
to make the skies weep for his benefit and yet the 
answer comes. The cloud takes the shape of a 
man’s hand as if to assure the prophet that God 
had heeded the suppliant hand raised to Him in 
prayer. Look again at Daniel—how powerless he 
was to reverse the king’s decree—all he could do 
was to “desire mercies of the God of heaven con- 
cerning the secret.” It was because he could do 
nothing else, not even to guess at the interpreta- 


68 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


tion, that God interpreted and even the heathen 
king himself was convinced and confessed. All 
through human history certain crises have arisen 
when the help of man was vain and God made 
bare His mighty-arm to show that there was noth- 
ing too hard for the Lord. Who has not read of 
Dr. Jessup of Syria and Dr. Bliss as they sat to- 
gether one day in Constantinople almost in tears 
over the edict of the Sultan with reference to the 
closing of all American and religious schools. 
One finally said to the other, “Jessup, let us lay 
this thing before the Sultan of Heaven.” They 
did; far into the night they prayed. The next 
day the Sultan of Turkey died and the decree was 
reversed. 

So I say to you, dear friend of mine, don’t be 
discouraged because you can’t see around the turn 
of the road. Light moves only in straight lines 
to you, but God is Light and in Him is no dark- 
ness at all. He holds the key of all unknown and 
you, His child, can be glad. He knows the com- 
bination of every safe in the universe. He has 
the keys to every room. He knows the location 
of the secret springs which compel to action. 
When you reach Him you are in touch with the 
central energy of the Universe. Come to Him 
and be at rest. 


VI. 


THE PROBLEM OF UNANSWERED 
PRAYER 


HE TELEPHONE is a wonderful conven- 

ience but sometimes we almost lose our re- 

ligion over it. The first problem is to get 
“Central,” which takes time to accomplish. The 
next task is for “Central” to get your friend— 
and how discouraging to have the repeated answer 
“Busy.” Then the third problem is to get your 
friend to do what you want. This reminds us 
somewhat, although imperfectly, of the process 
of prayer. The first thing necessary is to reach 
heaven and sometimes the heavens seem brass. 
The next thing is to get God and to get Him to 
connect you up with the thing that you desire. 
Now it is at this third step that the problem of 
Unanswered Prayer appears. Can you say that 
your prayer is unanswered merely because you do 
not get what you want? You don’t blame the phone 
company because your friend refuses to meet 
you downtown—not at all, they have done their 
part which was to put you in touch with him. 
And you must not blame prayer, if it does not 
deliver the answer at your front door—it has done 


69 


70 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


its part and has put you in touch with your great 
Friend named God—the rest is up to Him. He 
can hear you without granting your exact re- 
quest. There's a wide difference between un- 
heard prayer and unanswered prayer. God prom- 
ises to hear those who seek His face aright but 
He nowhere promises to be a messenger boy whose 
business it is to deliver all packages upon demand 
at a given address. 

One important fact ought to be understood at 
the outset of a discussion like this and that is 
that petition, 7. ¢., asking for things is only one 
element of prayer. That is to say prayer, real 
Christian prayer, includes other elements besides 
begging. It includes adoration, in which we 
adore God for what He is. It includes confes- 
sion, in which we bemoan our sins. It includes 
praise in which we thank Him for all His bene- 
fits. It also includes communion in which we sit 
and talk over the things of the Kingdom as friend 
with friend. Then, too, it ought to include in- 
tercession in which we lift our friends and their 
burdens to His kindly care. And it should in- 
volve consecration in which we pledge ourselves 
anew to His will. So that even if prayer failed 
us at the one point of petition, that’s no reason 
why we should throw away its other possibilities 
and blessings. Do you never call up your friend 
except when you want to get something out of 
him? Don’t you ever ’phone him just to say 


UNANSWERED PRAYER T1 


“good morning’ and to tell him you still bear 
him in mind? What sort of friend is that who 
never calls on you except when he wants to bor- 
row five dollars? You see this idea of using 
prayer just as a special delivery wagon is far be- 
low the Christian ideal—and yet some people 
never rise above the heathen level in their con- 
ception. 

Now when you turn to the Bible you find that 
it is full of unanswered prayers and yet men kept 
on praying just the same. The Psalmist cried 
out once in despair, “O my God, I cry in the day- 
time, but Thou answerest not and in the night sea- 
son, I am not silent.’ There was twenty-four 
hour service, day and night, but no answer. Job 
had the same experience. He said he stood up 
and cried unto God and the Almighty just looked 
at him, but made no reply. Moses also—he prayed 
to enter the Promised Land, but died on Nebo’s 
lonely mountain. Jeremiah lamented once that 
God had covered Himself with a cloud so that 
no prayer could pass through. Paul—how earn- 
estly he asked three times for the removal of his 
thorn in the flesh and how utterly he was denied! 
Last and greatest of all, Jesus Himself in the 
Garden prayed for delivery from the bitter cup 
but had to drink it all. So we can see from just 
this glance that some of earth’s best men have had 
to learn the “patience of unanswered prayer.” 
And yet every one of these saints of God was 


12 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


heard,—though not affirmatively answered. 

There is a passage in the life of Adoniram 
Judson that throws some light just here. Near the 
close of his days he said, “I never prayed sin- 
cerely and earnestly for anything but it came at 
some time—no matter at how distant a day—in 
some shape, probably the last I should have de- 
vised, it came.” Now look at his life. He had 
prayed to go to India but was compelled to go to 
Burmah; he prayed for his wife’s life but was 
compelled to bury her and his two children. He 
prayed for release from prison and yet lay there 
for months in chains. How could he say he had 
always been answered? Why, he was answered 
in the same way in which my child is answered 
who asks me for a lot of things on his birthday 
which may not be best for him to have. He 
wants a knife but is too young for it. He wants 
a bicycle but the streets are too dangerous and so 
we talk it over and decide. I am not indifferent 
to his eager plea—far from it. My boy is heard, 
patiently heard, but not answered as he desires. 
And so, let us not accuse God of deafness or in- 
difference just because He is wise. Let us now see 
if we are prepared to give three or four answers to 
the question why prayer is often unanswered. 


I. Many So-called Unanswered Be Are 
Really Answered, But in Disguise. 


Dr. Arthur T. Pierson pointed out to us some 





UNANSWERED PRAYER (3 


years ago the very helpful truth that God’s House 
of Prayer has several stories and that the answer 
may come out from the fourth story while we 
insist on waiting at the gate of the first story. 
And because the reply does not come out on our 
level, we go away complaining, while all the time 
God’s answer is hunting for us and we do not 
recognize it. For example—there are four pos- 
sible planes of answer. The lowest plane, the first 
story, is where the answer is immediate and ob- 
vious—this is the plane of sight. It doesn’t take 
any faith to push the slot machine and receive the 
gum, for that’s what we expect. So God gives 
this kind of answer to beginners, not to try their 
faith too much. When Eleazar went to get a wife 
for Isaac and when Rebekah came in just the way 
he asked—this was a transaction on the first story, 
the lowest plane. Then there is a second story 
where the answer is delayed and disguised, as in 
the case of Paul who prayed that he might get to 
see Rome. He did get there, but he entered as a 
prisoner who had just escaped shipwreck and was 
almost killed. Certainly that wasn’t the kind of 
answer he expected. 

There is a higher plane still, the third story 
where the prayer is denied and yet answered— 
that is, the literal request is refused but the real 
desire is given; refused in letter, granted in spirit. 
Monica complained of refused prayer when Augus- 
tine went to Rome. She said, “Lord, if I can’t 


04 SCIENCH AND PRAYER 


control him here at home, what will happen to him 
in that great city?” But God happened to him— 
God let him go but directed him to Ambrose of 
Milan who led him to Christ. Was Monica 
answered? No.~ Was she? Yes. Finally there 
is the highest plane—the fourth story, where the 
prayer is apparently unheeded. All we can do is 
to leave it to God and to wait for the disclosures 
of eternity. Give God time—He doesn’t die 
when you do. He may answer your petition long 
after you have gone to glory. George Muller 
ptayed fifty years for the conversion of two men 
and died in faith believing they must come sooner 
or later, and so they did, shortly after his death. 

Now then in view of this four-story House of 
Prayer, don’t let us limit God in His delivery of 
replies. The package will come sooner or later 
wrapped up in such a whirl of events that you may 
not recognize it; but either it will come or some- 
thing better. Henry Ward Beecher put the truth 
tersely when he said, “A woman prays for pa- 
tience, and God sends her a green cook.” He 
answered her request but wrapped it up in an in- 
experienced maid and she did not recognize it till 
after dinner; then she knew. When she was about 
to explode in despair, she said, “Look here, this is 
my Father’s doing.” The request only is ours. 
The form and fashion of the answer is God’s. Was 
it not John Newton who wrote out his experience 
in the old hymn? 





UNANSWERED PRAYER (os) 


“TI asked the Lord that I might grow 
In faith and love and every grace, 

Might more of His salvation know 
And seek more earnestly His face. 


’Twas He who taught me thus to pray, 
And He I trust has answered prayer; 
But tt has been in such a way 
As almost drove me to despair.” 


II. Some Prayers Are Really Unanswered 
Because We Ask For the Wrong Thing. 


Do you give your children everything they ask 
for? Would it always be for the best for them 
to have what they want? Are their ignorant re- 
quests not the very height of folly sometimes? 
Isn’t the kindest thing you can do for them, to say 
“No?’” I recall two boys in my father’s congre- 
gation in the East years ago—both of them sons 
of wealth. They got what they wanted when they 
wanted it. They were the envy of my childish 
poverty. Where are they today? One of them 
after a few wasted years died at sea. The other 
landed as a tramp one day in a Kentucky town 
and panhandled my father for the railroad fare 
back home and neither he nor the money has 
ever been seen since. Spoiled children—we call 
them. Yes, they were spoiled because their igno- 
rant prayers were answered affirmatively by over- 
indulgent parents who didn’t have sense enough to 


76 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


say, No. Now God has sense enough to say No. 
And that’s why some of our prayers are un- 
answered. He is too good a Father to let ig- 
norant children rule the house. 

The Book of James has more about unanswered 
prayer and the reasons for it than any other Book 
in the Bible, and this is one of the reasons he 
gives. He says that some people have not be- 
cause they ask not, and others have not because 
they ask amiss,—for the wrong thing. Just now 
we spoke of those who waited at the wrong door 
for their answer. Now we speak of those who ask 
for the wrong articles on the counter and father 
refuses to buy them. 

Suppose for a moment God answered all our 
shortsighted prayers. Here’s one man who prayed 
the Allies might win and another that the Ger- 
mans might. How can God answer both prayers? 
Here’s the farmer who prays for rain tomorrow 
and the autoist asks for fair weather. Here’s 
the seller who prays steel may go up tomorrow 
and the buyer prays it may go down. God must 
have some purpose at the heart of all this mass 
of events to which everything must be referred. 
God will accomplish His will and if your petition 
falls in line with that it will be answered; if not, 
it will be denied. Hence the wisdom of Augus- 
tine’s prayer, “O Lord, grant that I may do Thy 
will as if it were my will; so that Thou mayest 
do my will as if it were Thy will.” Longfellow 





= ik 
ie a lt ee 


UNANSWERED PRAYER (i) 


in his table-talk was speaking of the folly of un- 
iversally answered prayer “What discord should 
we bring into the universe if all our prayers were 
answered? Then we should govern the world and 
not God. And do you think we should govern 
it better? It gives me only pain when I hear the 
long, wearisome petitions of men asking for they 
know not what. As frightened women clutch at 
the reins when there is no danger, so do we grasp 
at God’s government with our prayers. Thanks- 
giving with a full heart—and the rest silence and 
submission to the divine will!’ 


“I asked for bread; God gave a stone wstead; 

Yet while I pillowed there my aching head, 
The angels made a ladder of my dreams 

Which upward to celestial mountains led. 

And when I woke before the morning’s beams, 
Around my resting place the manna lay; 
And, praising God, I went upon my way, 

) For I was fed. 


I asked for strength; for with the noontide heat 
I fainted, while the reapers, singing sweet, 
Went forward with rich sheaves I could not bear. 
Then came the Master, with His blood-stained 

feet, 

And lifted me with sympathetic care; 
Then on His arm I leaned till all was done, 
And I stood with the rest at set of sun, 
My task complete. 


18 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


I asked for light; around me closed the mght; 
Nor guiding stars met my bewildered sight; 
For storm clouds gathered in a tempest near, 

Yet in the lightning’s blazing, roaring flight 
I saw the way before me straight and clear. 

What though Hs leading pillar was on fire, 
And not the sunbeam of my heart’s desire? 

My path was bright. 


God answers prayer; sometimes when hearts are 
weak 
He gives the very gifts believers seek. 
But often faith must learn a deeper rest. 
And trust God’s silence when He does not speak; 
For He, whose Name is Love, will send the 
best. 
Stars may burn out, nor mountain walls endure, 
But God ts true, His promises are sure 
To those who seek.” 


III. Some Prayers Are Not Answered Because 
The Time is Not Ripe And We Are Too Impa- 
tient to Wait God’s Pleasure. 


Boys, on Hallowe’en, ring bells and run. A dig- 
nified southern clergyman noticing a little boy 
trying to ring a bell and forgetting that it was 
All Saints’ Eve, volunteered to ring the bell for 
him. After the bell was rung, the lad said, “Now 
run like the dickens.” Too many Christians do 
that—pull the bell of prayer and demand instant 


Nas na 


UNANSWERED PRAYER 19 


service. God must drop all the other concerns of 
heaven to attend to their important wants. They 
want “‘service.”’ ‘They expect to touch a button 
and have Heaven do the rest—and do it instanter! 

Spurgeon discussed this point very clearly when 
he compared our prayers to ships. “It may be 
your prayer is like a ship which, when it goes 
on a very long voyage, does not come home laden 
so soon; but when it does come home it has a 
richer freight! Mere ‘coasters’ will bring you 
coals or such ordinary things, but they that go 
afar to Tarshish return with gold and ivory. 
Coasting prayers, such as we pray every day, 
bring us many necessaries; but there are great 
prayers which, like the old Spanish galleons, cross 
the ocean and are longer out of sight, but come 
home deep laden with a golden freight.” 

Surely this is a reasonable position. God has 
to wait for certain conditions to mature. ‘“There- 
fore will the Lord wait,” says the Psalmist, ‘‘that 
He may be gracious unto you.” He waits in 
order to make the blessing larger when it comes. 
We are like an impatient man I saw in a restau- 
rant in Cincinnati who was just about to leave 
the place in disgust when his order was brought. 
We should be somewhat like the farmer when 
he sows the seed. He prays nature to give him 
back an abundant harvest, and then he goes away 
and leaves his petition and waits. If he were to 
insist on an answer next day or next week, he 


80 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


would get nothing but the seed back; but, if he 
will wait, he will get his own with compound 
interest. 

Let us remember, as Dr. Fosdick reminds us, 
there are three answers to prayer—‘‘No,” ‘‘Yes” 
and “Wait.’’ Some insist there is only one and 
that is “Yes.” It is easy to believe in a system 
that always answers “Yes.” But “No” is just 
as real an answer as “Yes.” If I ask my friend 
for a gift and he says “No,” he has certainly 
answered me. But suppose God says “Wait.” 
God has to make some of us wait on a siding 
while His through trains go ahead and very fool- 
ish is the one who gives up the game when the 
signal says “Stop and wait.” “Wait, I say, on 
them Words): 


IV. Some Prayers Are Unanswered Because 
of Unforgiven Sins: 


Some people need a course in spiritual fumiga- 
tion before they are fit to approach God. That’s 
what St. James says. He gives this rule, “Draw 
nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you,” and 
then he seems to stop and think a moment how 
unworthy sinners are to come near to God and so 
he adds ‘Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and 
purify your hearts, ye double-minded.” That's 
why the Catholics insist we must go through Pur- 
gatory—it’s a sort of dry cleaning establishment 
in which the spots of sin are wiped away. Well, 


UNANSWERED PRAYER 81 


there is a great truth at the basis of all this and ~ 


that is, that sin unfits us to talk with God. “If I 
regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not 
hear me.” So Isaiah told the people that sin 
shuts the door that leads into the Holy of Holies. 
“Your iniquities have separated between you and 
your God and your sins have hid His face from 
you.” 

Vasari tells us that Raphael used to wear a 
candle in a pasteboard cap so that while he was 
painting, his shadow would not fall upon his 
work. Is not this a reminder, a kind of parable 
of prayer? Many a man’s prayers are spoiled by 
his own shadow. There may be some pet sin in 
your life or mine which short-circuits our prayers 
so that they never get through to God’s throne. 

Sherwood Eddy on returning from one of his 
Indian trips told how the great Madras Y. M. C. 
A. Building was held up for months after the site 
was chosen, the plans drawn and the money pro- 
vided, because two shanty owners would not let 
go their hold on a little ground in the center of 
the plot. May there not be some unsightly shanty 
of sin in the foreground of our lives which is 
keeping God from proceeding with the building 
of character in us. Oh, how we hold on to our 
own property! I read of a man who visited a 
London doctor to consult him about his impaired 
vision. The doctor, after examination, said “If 
you do not give up such and such a practice, you 


82 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


will be blind in six months.” ‘The man hesitated 
a moment and turning to the window said, ‘“Then 
farewell, sweet light, I cannot give up my sin.” 
Oh, my friends, is there some unclean thing, some 
sin, some idol which we prefer to God? If so, 
we cannot expect Him to hear us. It’s like trouble 
on the telephone wire—if the wire is not clear 
and the connection good, you can’t hear your 
friend and he can’t hear you. And sin does just 
that thing,—it musses up the wire—it interferes 
with the connection. O Thou great Central of 
the Universe, give us a clean wire to Thee! 


V. Some Prayers Are Unanswered Because 
We Fail to Co-operate With God in His Endeavour 
to Get us to Help Him Answer Our Prayers: 


It is so convenient to throw the whole respon- 
sibility on God and to say, “Now I’ve turned the 
whole proposition over to the safety-vault of 
Prayer, it doesn’t concern me any more.” You 
remember the man in the missionary meeting who 
was so intent on singing the hymn he didn’t see 
the collection basket. He sang “Fly Abroad, Thou 
Mighty Gospel,” and the usher had to interrupt 
his prayer-hymn to say, ‘Faith, man, what will 
you give to help it fly?” That’s it—if you really 
mean the prayer, you can help God answer it. 
Wiser was the little girl who prayed that her 
brother’s trap might not catch any more little 
birds and then she went down and kicked the trap 


UNANSWERED PRAYER 83 


to pieces. She was a co-operator with God, a 
member of His Union. 

There’s a tremendous lesson here for us all, I 
believe. Some Christians try to make prayer a 
substitute for work. Here’s a boy who asks his 
father to do his algebra for him. The boy wants 
to substitute prayer for work, but the wise father 
knows the son needs the intellectual discipline in- 
volved and he will say “No” to the petition. 
Some Christians have never risen above the school- 
boy stage. Look at that scene where the Israelites 
stood still with the Red Sea in front of them and 
the pursuing Egyptians behind. Moses goes apart 
to pray and the answer he receives is amazing; 
“Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the 
Children of Israel that they go forward.” That 
is to say—there is a time when prayer is an insult 
and co-operation with God’s providence is the order 
of the day. Thank God we can pray and work 
together—the two are not mutually exclusive. 
We can join the army of Nehemiah and make 
his slogan ours: “We made our prayer and we set 
a watch.” 


VI. Finally, Some Prayers Are Unanswered 
Because of Cur Doubt and Lack of Fath: 


The first time I visited the Pacific Coast a man 
showed me a wave-motor. He said that many at- 
tempts have been made to utilize the restless en- 
ergy of the sea, and to get its breaking waves to 


84 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


convert their energy into electric power. But he 
added that no success had been met with because 
the sea was so undependable. Now the tide was 
high and now low. The same wave that carries 
you in one moment will carry you out the next. 
So nothing much has ever been accomplished. 
Well, just bear that picture in mind as you turn 
to the first chapter of James and now read “Let 
him ask in faith, nothing doubting; for he that 
doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by 
the wind and tossed. For let not that man think 
that he shall receive anything of the Lord—a 
double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” You 
see the aptness of the comparison. The doubter 
doesn’t know which way he is going—he is tempest 
tossed—doubt and faith, faith and doubt, ever 
fighting with each other for the victory. 

James says, “Don’t come to God until the bat- 
tle is over.” Don’t go to a physician until you are 
sure of his ability to cure. Don’t go to a lawyer 
until you have absolute confidence in his legal 
powers. Halfway measures get nowhere. Ques- 
tion marks do not make solid foundations. 

And so, dear friends, go through your soul on a 
hunt for the question marks and pull them out if 
you can. Don’t you remember how often Jesus 
would say to a man before He healed him, “Be- 
lievest thou that I am able to do this?” And when 
the man was able to reply ‘Yes, Lord,” the 
Master honoured his faith. 





UNANSWERED PRAYER 85 


A poet tells of a company of pilgrims gathered 
by the sea who were bemoaning the losses their 
lives had known. One spoke of vanished wealth, 
another of lost opportunities, another of friends 
and family gone. 


“But when their tales were done, 
There stood among them one,— 
A stranger seeming from all sorrow free— 
‘Sad loses ye have met, 
But mine are sadder yet, 
For the believing heart has gone from me, 
And they all turned to lim and said 
‘Yes, thine are saddest yet 
For the believing heart has gone from thee.” 


VIL. 
WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 


HE PSALMIST says “O Thou that hear- 
est prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.” 
This is an affirmation and a prophecy. It 
affirms that God hears prayer. It prophesies that 
all flesh shall come with their burdens and needs 
to this answering God. Now has this prophecy 
been fulfilled? If so, why—that’s our query to- 
day. Granted that away back in the primitive 
days of the Psalmist men came with their de- 
sires to their knees, why should we in the full light 
of the twentieth century pray? Let John Huss, 
the Reformer, as he stands at the opening of the 
fifteenth century answer. He gave eight reasons _ 
why people should pray. First, because God wants 
our prayers and praise and we should do this for 
His sake. Second, because we become more con- 
scious of our blessings by returning thanks for 
them. Third, because our zeal and devotion are 
heightened. Fourth, because prayer occupies the 
worshiper and keeps him from evil. Fifth, because 
prayer incites the worshiper to good deeds. Sixth, 
because prayer preserves the virtues of the pray- 
ing soul. Seventh, because he who prays for 


86 





WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 87 


worthy things, obtains them. Eighth, because he 
who prays, sets others the example of prayer. 

These eight reasons apply as well to the twen- 
tieth century as to the fifteenth, though we shall 
not enumerate so many today. There are special 
reasons why we Christians should pray, but there 
are some general reasons why everybody should 
pray. 

A father brought his idiotic child to a profes- 
sor in the Maryland College of Pharmacy to pro- 
nounce his opinion of its sanity. The doctor asked, 
“Has the child any idea of the value of money?” 
The father answered “No.” The physician then 
asked, “Does the child show any inclination to 
pray?’ and the father answered “No.” Then said 
the doctor “You may be sure of the child’s 
idiocy.” Turning to his class the professor said, 
“Gentlemen, I asked that latter question because 
it is as natural for the soul to go out to God as 
to breathe. If you don’t care for prayer, some- 
thing is wrong.” Granting then the universal ap- 
peal of prayer, we come to try to answer the ques- 
tion ‘““Why should we pray?” I answer 


I. Because Instinctiwely We Can't Help It: 


Where does prayer come from anyhow? What 
room in the soul contains it till it bursts forth? 
Why does everybody feel the impulse to pray at 
some time or other? Apparently prayer originates 
in the feeling of desire (so the Asiatic words all 


88 SCIENCE AND PRAYHR 


indicate). A sense of need or longing pushes 
prayer like a projectile on its way to the throne 
of grace. Man is a bundle of desires, as the prov- 
erb says. The desire for more than we enjoy 
seems part of our-being. Now, the great religions 
of the Orient say that the goal of existence is the 
total extinction of desire and even Stoic philosophy 
said that the regulation of desire should be the 
aim of life. But Christianity, on the other hand, 
insists that we should find in Christ the outlet for 
our longing desires. We pray then along the ave- 
nues of our discontent and through the alchemy 
of God’s grace the common desire-life of human- 
ity may be transmuted into the prayer-life of ar- 
dent sons of God. The reason why instinctively 
we find prayer so natural is that our desires sur- 
mount our possessions, our liabilities always sur- 
pass our assets. This was why Carlyle said, 
“Prayer is and remains the native and deepest im- 
pulse of the soul of man.” 

Let us look then for a moment at this idea of 
the naturalness of prayer. Somebody asked 
Samuel Johnson what was the strongest argument 
for prayer and he answered, “Sir, there is no 
argument for prayer.” Now what did he mean? 
He meant that prayer goes deeper than all argu- 
ment. Arguments only go as deep as the brain, 
but prayer goes as deep as the soul. Instinct is 
much more fundamental than reason and the best 
argument for prayer is prayer. 


WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 89 


Do you remember Solomon’s prayer at the ded- 
ication of the temple? He assumes that any 
stranger or foreigner coming from anywhere on 
earth is likely to be a praying man. 

Prof. James of Harvard said, ‘We hear in 
these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal 
of discussion about the efficacy of prayer; and 
many reasons are given why we should not pray 
while others are given why we should pray. But 
in all this very little is said of the reason why 
we do pray. The reason why we do pray is sim- 
ply that we cannot help praying.” Let’s take a 
little spin for a moment around the globe and note 
that we can’t lose prayer wherever we may roam. 
One long ago Greek afternoon Socrates fled the 
city heat to sit beside a cool fountain underneath 
a plane-tree beyond the city walls. After the 
heat of the day was over, Phaedrus proposed that 
they return within the gates. Socrates said 
“Ought not you and I to pray before we leave?” 
And there in that beautiful Attic scene, Socrates 
prayed thus: “O thou Author of nature, well-be- 
loved, grant that I may be beautiful in the inner 
man!” No wonder Erasmus said ‘“Sancte 
Socrates, ora pro nobis.” Socrates prayed, we 
discover. ! | 

Come now to the harbor of Athens on another 
historic day, the day of the sailing of the Sicilian 
expedition. Thucydides tells that when all was 
ready for departure, silence was proclaimed by 


90 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


the sound of the trumpet and all with one voice 
before setting sail, offered up the customary 
prayers; these were recited not in each ship sep- 
arately but by a single herald, the whole fleet ac- 
companying him. The citizens and onlookers from 
the beach also joined in the prayer and when the 
libations were completed, the crews put to sea. 
So even the artistic and philosophic Greeks prayed. 

Some years ago, there were presented to the 
New York Public Library, two cylinders inscribed 
with the royal records of King Nebuchadnezzar 
of Babylon, said to be the most cruel king in all 
history. A goodly part of the inscriptions con- 
sists of three prayers to three of his favourite dei- 
ties. This oppressor, who was so wicked that 
tradition says the gods changed him into a calf 
for seven years, felt the impulse to pray,—hea- 
then, benighted prayers to be sure—but they show 
the outflow of the impulse to pray deep in the 
heart of man. : 

The Japanese know how to pray too, and some 
years ago at the time of the Russo-Japanese War 
the daily papers contained in every issue paragraphs 
of Shinto prayers. I have read some of these 
Shinto prayers and they seem to be charged with 
as deep feeling as our Christian prayers. One 
recalls Paul’s words, “Whom therefore ye igno- 
rantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” Then 
too there are Buddhist prayers. Why, you say, 
surely there is no place for prayer in Buddhism. 


WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 91 


Logically, of course not; and yet to meet this 
craving of the soul, certain formulae have been 
composed and are heard at every Buddhist shrine. 
Many times the question has been put to wor- 
shipers on the platform of the great Shue Dagon 
pagoda, “Are you praying to Gautama, or to the 
pagoda?” The answer always is “I am praying 
to no one.” “Then what are you praying for?” 
“For nothing, but I hope in some way, I know 
not how, to get benefit.” The devout Buddhist 
has a prayer to accompany every act of the day, 
from the folding up of his quilts in the morning 
to the two short prayers at bedtime. The Mos- 
lem is famous for the frequency, if not fervency, 
of his petitions, for five times during the day he 
must face Mecca and pray—first the liturgical and 
then the personal prayer. 

Even Comte, the philosopher who utterly 
banishes God, soul and immortality from his creed, 
prescribed for his disciples two hours of prayer 
daily because he recognized the act itself as one 
of the elemental functions of human nature. 
This brief survey indicates the truth of our propo- 
sition that human nature can’t help praying. 
Henry Ward Beecher summed it up well when he 
said “I pray on the principle that wine knocks 
the cork out of the bottle. There is an inward 
fermentation and there must be a vent.” “O Thou 
that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.” 


92 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 
II. We Should Pray Because Christ Prayed: 


Jesus is the Christian’s model man. Whatever 
He did we should do. Some one described Jesus 
in this way: ‘He came marching out of eternity 
a great praying soul.” Surely, if He came into 
Time with the dew of prayer upon Him, it looks 
as though we pilgrims to the Brighter Land need 
the rest-house of prayer frequently as a stopping- 
place in our pilgrimage. This is an argument 
which applies only to Christians, as you can see, 
but for us it is a commanding one. If we are to 
model our lives after His, then every act becomes 
law for us. We are like the little boy in school 
trying painfully to copy the handwriting at the 
top of the page. However poorly we follow Him, 
yet surely we ought to enroll as scholars in His 
school of prayer and learn His lesson of compan- 
ionship with the Father as best we can. As D. 
L. Moody said once: “Jesus never taught His dis- 
ciples how to preach, but He did teach them how 
to pray.”” When you stop to think of it, Jesus 
never taught His followers how to run churches 
or raise money or do a hundred other things, but 
He did teach them to pray. He never left on rec- 
ord a model sermon or a model burial or wedding 
service or a model anthem or hymn, but He did 
go out of His usual way to leave them a model 
prayer. That is very significant, as it shows how 
important He thought prayer was. 


WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 93 


But some people do not follow us here: they 
say that if God is Wisdom and Love, He knows 
all about our needs before we ask Him and it is 
presumptuous and useless for us to bother Him 
with our needs. They are somewhat like the 
Russian sect of “Non-Prayers’’ who insist that 
God can be worshiped only in spirit and who re- 
ject all forms of spoken prayer. But in this they 
are going beyond Jesus, for curiously enough the 
very argument that the twentieth century uses 
against prayer was Christ’s strongest argument 
for prayer. He said “Your heavenly Father 
knoweth what things ye have need of before you 
ask Him.” But just because of God’s understand- 
ing of our situation Jesus told us to pray in con- 
fidence of being heard. You can’t change God’s 
purpose but you can release it. Through prayer 
you can give God an opportunity to do what He 
wants to get done in the world. 


Til. We Should Pray Because the Bible Com- 
mands It: 


The Bible is a Book of open windows. Some 
years ago a physician in the south was struck with 
the fact, as he toured many miles through coun- 
try districts, that he rarely saw an open window 
in the school-houses which he passed; yet in those 
school rooms scores of children were breathing 
vitiated air and thus lowering their vitality. This 
matter of ventilation is so important that our 


94 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


laws are now insisting upon it for the health of 
the race. Very well, the Bible insists on the open 
window of prayer in the same way. It is said 
‘of Daniel that he prayed three times every day 
with his windews open toward Jerusalem. The 
prayerless life is a suffocated life. It is only by 
opening the windows of our soul to the ozone of 
heaven that we shall kill the poisonous infections 
of earth. 

Now when you turn to the Bible you find that 
the Jew has taught the world to pray—not only 
the great Jew whom we call Lord, but the Jew 
as a race. From first to last the Bible proposes 
prayer as its medicine for a sick world. What 
was the Bible conception of prayer? Even a cas- 
ual reading of its prayers will answer that. Prayer 
was a turning of the heart to God. Jeremiah told 
the people they had turned their back and not 
their face to God. He said “In the time of your 
need you'll turn around quick enough, but God 
will tell you to let your idols save you. He doesn’t 
care for over-the-shoulder prayers.” 

Prayer was just the natural talking together of 
the soul and God and so you find that Hebrew 
prayer was mostly extempore. Outside of the 
Psalms which were used liturgically the people 
were free to choose their words. When two 
friends meet to commune together they do not use 
the conventional language of formal discourse and 
so with prayer. It depends on your acquaintance 


WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 95 


with God how informal you can afford to be. 
I call my friend by his first name, but strangers 
do not. The Talmud shows how the Hebrew 
baptised his whole day with prayer. On waking, 
he uttered one thanksgiving. While he washed, 
while he dressed, when he put on his shoes, when 
he adjusted his belt, when he put on his hat—all 
these simple acts were attuned to prayer. The 
sight of the sky at night, of the opening buds of 
spring, of an earthquake or hurricane—all the 
phases of nature were opportunities for corre- 
spondence with heaven. Hence, when the Bible 
tells us to pray without ceasing, it is not to be dis- 
missed as a mere figure of speech, but is to be 
taken literally in the sense that we are to have 
souls with open windows, ventilated spirits if you 
please, ready to receive any breezes that may 
blow from Heaven-Land and ready to broadcast 
our soul-throbs up to God without delay. 


“My God, is any hour so sweet 
From blush of morn to evening star— 
As that which calls me to Thy feet, 
The hour of ‘prayer? 


— No words can tell what sweet relief 
There for my every want I find; 
What strength for warfare, balm for grief, 
What peace of mind!” 


96 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


IV. We Should Pray Because the Practice of 
Prayer is the Only Way to Realise its Blessings: 


Experience is the great teacher after all. I 
might lecture to a thirsty man for an hour on the 
blessings of water, but the only way he will really 
know them is to drink. I might seek to tell a 
man what love is like but the only way to know 
love is to love. So it is with prayer. The best 
argument for prayer is prayer. Try it and see, 
is our advice. ‘Prove me now herewith, saith the 
Lord.” There can be no fairer test than that. A 
satisfied customer is the best advertisement, for 
prayer as well as for earth’s business. 

Gladstone found it so, according to John Mor- 
ley. When Morley’s biography of Gladstone was 
opened it proved to contain some of the intimate 
secrets of the great leader’s life. One was an 
entry in his Journal as follows: “Spoke thirty to 
thirty-five minutes on the University Bill with 
more ease than I hoped, having been more mind- 
ful of the divine aid.”” Then he adds the words, 
“Hidden manna!’ You would have had pretty 
hard work to convince Gladstone that he was not 
being fed by hidden manna. A hungry man knows 
when he is being fed—but here again the thing 
that strengthened Gladstone’s belief in prayer was 
not argument, but experience. 

When that young Yale man was dying in Den- 
ver his father did everything money could do to 


WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 97 


save him. He sent for a specialist to come on a 
special train from Chicago to attend him. One 
day he went into his boy’s room and said “Son, 
is there anything more I can do for you? I will 
do anything that money can do.” (But there are 
a few things money can’t do.) The boy said 
“Father, pray for me.” The father walked to 
the window and bit his lips till the blood ran, but 
he couldn’t pray. Four days later as he was re- 
turning from the grave of that boy he said “I 
would give all I have if I could call that boy back 
from the grave and pray for him as requested.” 
He was poorer than you and I are, for he could- 
n't pray and we can. May God give us grace to 
pray before the funeral day comes. 


“A little talk with Jesus, how it smooths the 

rugged road! 

It seems to help me onward when fainting ’neath 
my load; 

When worn with care and sorrow, my eyes with 
tears are dim, 

There is nothing gives me comfort lke a little 
talk with Him.” 


VIII 


WHAT ARE SOME OF THE HINDRANCES 
TO SUCCESSFUL PRAYER? 


TOOK a walk through the Dead-Letter Of- 
fice. It looked like a cemetery. It’s too bad 
to think of all these epistles never reaching 

their goal. Here, what’s the matter with this 
one? Oh, it had no postage and of course even 
our great government can’t carry letters free. 
Well, what’s the trouble with this second one? 
Oh, it was misdirected—there is no such address 
and after vainly trying several we gave up in 
despair. Our carriers do not have time to be 
Pinkerton detectives. Here’s a third—what’s the 
trouble with it? Well, the handwriting is illeg- 
ible—read it yourself—can you make out what 
that is? Neither can we. The writer deserved to 
have his letter lost who is so careless as that. 
Well, here’s a fourth—what’s the disease that 
killed it? Why, it contained such foul matter we 
couldn’t transport it—its illness was contagious 
and we feared it might corrupt other clean mail. 
And so I went to one desk after another in this 
great cemetery of dead letters and I said to my- 
self, “Every one of these letters is a prayer—it is 


98 


UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 99 


a request to the government to carry the envelope 
somewhere and not one of the petitions has been an- 
swered”’ and then I thought of the words of James, 
“Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss.” 

Then I took another walk—this time through 
the Dead-Prayer office. And that was a sadder 
cemetery still. For there I saw countless peti- 
tions piled up as so much refuse. Some of them 
looked like they had never gotten any higher than 
the ceiling—they didn’t look like aviators—they 
had no aroma of heaven about them—their wings 
were clipped—something was wrong. I took 
them up one by one as I did the letters and thought 
I would tell you the reason for their having died. 
That resolve is my message today. 


I. We Do Not Give Enough Time to Prayer: 


I’d hate for somebody to punch the time-clock 
on us when we go into the prayer-room and when 
we come out from it,—wouldn’t you? Suppose 
. we took a census and honestly asked for an esti- 
mate of the amount of time per day we spend in 
prayer. Suppose we averaged it up. Do you know 
what I prophesy? That the average would not 
be much above five minutes. The ordinary Chris- 
tian is so busy with things on earth that he doesn’t 
_ take enough time to look up, unless there is an 
eclipse of the sun and then he finds time to quit 
looking at Broadway and glance at the Milky Way 
for a change. 


100 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


How many of us would treat our most casual 
acquaintance the way we treat God? It reminds us 
of the man who saw Voltaire uncover his head 
at a religious procession in France. The friend 
said, “Have you and God made up? Are you on 
speaking terms?’ And Voltaire replied, “We 
salute, but we do not speak.” Just a hasty salute, 
a pious gesture is all our prayer is often. Dr. 
South reminds us that nobody but a fool would 
rush carelessly into the presence of a great man 
and how big a fool is he who dashes directly into 
the throne-room of God without going through 
the anteroom of silence and preparation. You 
know what would happen to a man who dashed 
wildly past all the guards into the office of the 
King of England or the President of the United 
States of America. But we treat the King of 
Kings with as scant courtesy as that. You would 
think we would be decently polite to God even if 
we are in a hurry with the awfully important 
engagements of earth. Some Christians ought 
to take a course in good manners. Do you know 
some of our great church gatherings and conven- 
tions actually put the devotions at the most im- 
possible hour of the day, apparently on the prin- 
ciple that God ought to be glad to get any of the 
time of such an important group of men as that. 
Anything will do for Him. Even in our own 
Assemblies we for years have had scanty attend- 
ance at prayers because they come at the early 


UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 101 


hour. But now we are wiser grown and stop in 
the middle of the day for the blessing of the 
Eternal. ! 

Open for a moment the Book of Great Saints 
and see how these men and women took time for 
an office-hour appointment with God. Horace 
Bushnell writes on one of the shining pages “I 
fell into the habit of talking with God on every 
occasion. I talk myself asleep at night and open 
the morning talking with Him.” Sir Thomas 
Browne, the famous physician, has another illu- 
minated word: He resolved so to pray both on the 
highway and in the home that there would be no 
street or passage in the city where he lived that 
could speak out and say it had never heard him 
pray. He sowed the seeds of prayer along all its 
highways and byways and a great fruitage of 
spiritual power was the result. Brother Lawrence 
is another of the immortals, and he decided that 
by continually carrying on conversation with God 
he could bring himself to realize in a spiritual 
manner God’s presence in any place he might be. 
John Wesley would be expected to be methodical 
in his prayer-life as in other things. Scores of 
his diaries have been preserved, and on the first 
page of each one is found the vow that with God’s 
help he will devote an hour morning and evening 
to private prayer and that he will talk face to face 
with God with no lightness or facetiousness. 


102 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


“There is a viewless, cloistered room 

As high as heaven, as fair as day, 

Where, though my feet may join the throng, 
My soul can enter in and pray. 


One harkening, even, cannot know 
When I have crossed the threshold o’er; 
For He alone, who hears my prayer, 
Has heard the shutting of the door.” 


Of course one secret of getting more time for 
prayer is in having a definite season of the day or 
night for devotion. The morning-watch is being 
emphasised by many of our young people’s socie- 
ties, before business crowds in on the affairs of 
the day. This hour may best suit some, another 
may suit others. Dr. F. B. Meyer tells of a godly 
man of his acquaintance who, no longer able to 
exercise the ministerial office, devoted his life to 
the high and noble work of intercession. From 
breakfast till his midday meal and again from six 
to ten p.m. he was accustomed to bear up before 
God his brethren in the ministry, missionaries and 
other Christian workers. As he prayed the area 
of his prayers widened and the power of his 
prayers increased. It looks as though it takes all 
three dimensions to measure the reaches of prayer, 
for it is as wide as human need, as high as the 
eternal God and as deep as the lowest reaches of 
man’s sin. Prayer then is to be computed in 
cubic measure and when we speak of time for 


UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 103 


prayer, it is not a mere matter of length we think 
of, but also breadth and depth. Some people’s 
prayers are long but that’s all you can say for 
them—they never get very high and they never 
reach very far. However, length is one possible 
dimension of acceptable prayer and that is not to 
be forgotten. 


Il. We Do Not Gwe Enough Thought to 
Prayer: 


Bishop Whipple of Minnesota tells of one of 
his clergy who was called to comfort a dying girl. 
The house in which she lay was kept by an “in- 
carnate devil” who was much offended that he 
should pray there. The woman finally met him 
at the door with a knife saying he was not to 
pray in that house again. He had in his hand a 
stout walking-stick and turned to her and said, 
“Madam, I came here to commend this dying 
girl to Jesus Christ. I can pray with my eyes 
open. I shall now pray and if you stir one step 
while I am praying I will break your head with 
this stick.” Thus he prayed with open eyes. 
More Christians should do so. The thing to be 
commended for our purpose today is not the 
weapon but the vision. 

Too many Christians are slovenly in prayer. 
They are actually so careless and thoughtless they 
almost yawn in the presence of God. Their 
minds go wool-gathering. They fail to concen- 


104 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


trate their thoughts. When the Scripture says, 
“Watch and pray,’ I wonder if it doesn’t mean, 
watch what you're saying—pray with your mind’s 
eye open to the needs you are presenting. Chester- 
ton has pointed out the difference between the 
Buddhist saint and the Christian saint. The 
former is represented with a sleek, comfortable 
body, closed eyes, lost in meditation; while the 
latter has his eyes open looking bravely at the 
world’s burdens and needs. It is a valid distinc- 
tion. Intelligent prayer demands thought. 
Benjamin Jowett, the great Master of Balliol, 
had the same experience that all of us have, in the 
difficulty he experienced of keeping his mind on 
his work when he went to prayer. He bemoaned 
his wayward mind, for when he read a great 
work of fiction he could hardly take his mind from 
it; but when he went to prayer he said he could 
hardly keep his mind on it for two consecutive 
minutes at a time. Haven’t you heard people 
praying who were lost? They didn’ t know where 
they were going—in fact they didn’t seem to be 
getting anywhere, only running around in a circle. 
The three rules for a good speech apply also to 
prayer: first, have something to say; second, say 
it; third, quit. Philip Sidney was advised by his 
father, when he went away to school, never to 
neglect “thoughtful prayer.” It was golden ad- 
vice, especially the adjective. Sidney followed it 
and he was the man for whom months after his 


UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 105 


death, every gentleman in England was mourning. 
Thoughtful prayer requires thought. Some people 
go into God’s presence and just turn on their 
mouths and let them ramble along—what an in- 
sult to Infinite Intelligence—treating the Almighty 
with less respect than you would the ice-man! 
You have no right to waste anybody’s time, much 
less God’s, unless you have something to say. D. 
L. Moody once said that most of the great prayers 
of the Bible were short prayers, but they were 
packed full of meat. Why, he said, when Peter 
found himself sinking on the water and was about 
to cry “Lord, save me,” if he had put as long a 
preamble into his devotions as many do nowadays, 
he would have been forty feet under water before 
he got to the petition for rescue. I can just imag- 
ine the sinking disciple gurgling “Lord, this will 
be continued in our next—I haven’t got to what 
I wanted to say yet.’”’ Poor Peter—brevity is the 
soul of prayer sometimes. Wiser was the young 
Scotchman who rushed into a Highland vestry, 
his reason gone, and said “Let us pray; O Lord, 
give us power, give us point, give us brevity. 
Amen.” He wasn’t as insane in that prayer as 
one might suppose. God alone can give us power, 
but we alone can give point and brevity to our 
prayers. Rowland Hill said he liked short, ejac- 
ulatory prayers because they reached heaven be- 
fore the devil could get a shot at them. 


L106 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


A collection of the thoughtless and inane prayers 
of Christians would surprise you. You would not 
believe that people would take so literally the in- 
junction “Take no thought what ye shall speak.” 
If you are going to meet some earthly dignitary, 
you ponder in advance what you shall say when 
you are introduced to him. But how few of us 
plan our prayers in advance! We make a list be- 
fore we call up the grocer or the druggist; how 
absurd it would be to telephone such a place and 
say “O no, I have no special food or drug in 
mind—yjust anything you have on the shelves.” 

The “Christian World” once made a collection 
of some of these rambling inane prayers that 
waste God’s patience and time. One of them told 
how a man reminded the Lord that ‘Thy servant 
of old said, Almost thou persuadest me to be a 
Christian ;’ and another quoted this same over- 
worked individual “Thy servant of old” as saying 
“Oh, to be nothing, nothing!” A workhouse 
Chaplain prayed that his hearers might not trust 
in uncertain riches and a prison Chaplain that God 
would conduct the worshipers in safety to their 
several places of abode. One old man of eighty 
on crutches always used to pray at prayer meet- 
ing that the Lord would keep him from running 
with the giddy multitude to do evil. One man 
prayed with great feeling. “O Lord, we praise 
Thee, we are Thine—we feel that we are Thine— 
we know that we are Thine. Lord, make us 


UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 107 


Thine.” A cautious Scotch elder who had dined 
at his minister’s home was returning thanks after 
the meal for the various blessings. He concluded 
by invoking blessings on the pastor’s wife who 
had always upheld his hands in every good work— 
“at least,’ he added carefully, “as far as we 
know.” Father Taylor, of the Seaman’s Bethel, 
was a direct man in prayer who talked with the 
Lord sensibly; but once on the day before the 
State elections he seemed to think it necessary to 
use grandiloquent language. He asked that a man 
might be chosen who would rule in the fear of 
God, never fearing the face of clay, defeating cor- 
ruption and wire-pullers and so on; when sud- 
denly he paused and exclaimed “O Lord, what's 
the use of boxing the compass in this way? Give 
us George N. Briggs for governor. Amen!” 
Well, you say, what suggestion have you to 
give for this trouble of what we might call “joy- 
riding in prayer?” Simply this: “the prepara- 
tion of the heart in man and the answer of the 
tongue is from the Lord.” With God’s help let 
us prepare for prayer. The Missionary Calendars 
of Prayer have this very thing in mind—intelli- 
gent petition, and so they suggest to us the differ- 
ent workers at home and abroad who may be re- 
‘membered each day. Anyone can make his own 
prayer list and thus increase wonderfully his feel- 
ing of reality in prayer. The Director of the 
Africa Inland Mission prays daily by name for 


108 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


every one of the fifty missionaries on his field and 
so with some of the workers of the China Inland 
Mission. Mr. Frost calls it the “stage of speci- 
fication”? in intercessory prayer and it is a mile- 
stone too few of us have reached. Paul was that 
kind of an intercessor, as he wrote both to the 
Roman and Ephesian Churches that he could call 
God to witness how unceasingly he mentioned 
them in his prayers. God give us more such pas- 
tors and such pray-ers as that! 


Ill. We Do Not Give Enough Trust to 
Prayer: 


There is a very significant incident recorded in 
the first chapter of Acts in which it looks as 
though the early church made a great mistake. 
The question was, to find a successor to Judas 
Iscariot, to take his place among the apostles. 
Now listen to their prayer—they chose two men, 
Joseph and Matthias and then said, “Thou, Lord, 
who knowest the hearts of all men, show whether 
of these two Thou hast chosen.”” They picked out 
two men and limited God’s choice to one of the 
two. But suppose God wanted to vote for a 
third man who was neither the one nor the other 
of these two. As a matter of fact I believe God’s 
choice for the vacant place was Saul, who be- 
came thunderstruck into Paul. Do you ever hear 
of Joseph or Matthias again? Were they not 
colorless men? ‘They were stationary engines 


UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 109 


when God wanted a Mogul for the place. But 
you see the apostles first tied God’s hands and then 
asked Him to pick out a man. 

Now, brethren, let us give God some credit of 
confidence. When Charles Kingsley was asked to 
pray for fair weather, he refused because he said 
it might be that God’s will was rain. God cannot 
get His will done through us if we are going to 
insist that His answer come marching down 
boulevards which we have chosen. We cannot 
dictate at which floor His elevator of blessing shall 
stop. Maybe He wants to come by the elevated 
while we suggest the subway or surfaceway. In- 
stead of tying His hands why not hold His hands 
and let Him do what He wills with ours? 

Henry Drummond tells of a little girl, who, 
when crossing the ocean, dropped her doll over 
the side of the ship. She had seen the captain 
stop the ship to rescue a man who had fallen over- 
board, so she went to him and asked him to stop 
the ship that she might recover her doll. When 
he refused her request she thought him cruel, but 
when the vessel reached the harbour, the first thing 
the captain did was to buy the little girl the most 
beautiful doll in the city. He refused her spe- 
cific request, but he gave her something better than 
was asked. She did not tie the captain’s hands, 
but he filled hers! 

Why don’t we get more out of prayer—that 
has been our query and we have tried to answer 


110 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


that we need more time, more thought, more trust. 
Perhaps we might sum it all by saying that we 
need to be converted from the active to the pas- 
sive voice. The prodigal son passed through the 
revolution and you will notice that his prayer 
changed from “give me” to “make me.” At first 
it was “give me the portion of the goods that 
falleth to me’ and at last it was “make me as 
one of thy hired servants.” When we graduate 
from the “give me” class and into the “make me” 
class, then God can do more with us and through 
us. Let’s all go back to school and let God work 
with us until He has gotten us out of the beggars’ 
class and into the builders’ class—till we all come 
to graduation day—‘‘to the measure of the stature 
of the fullness of Christ.” 


IX. 


WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIONS TO 
PRAYER? 


the Catholic Church in France is the 
“conference.” This is a debate between 

two of the most learned priests in the great 
Church of the Madaleine, one taking the side of 
the believer and the other the part of the heretic. 
It is said that the great church is packed to listen 
to these discussions and that the “heretic” priest 
takes his part with great fidelity. At one such dis- 
cussion in his student days, Joseph Ernest Renan, 
who later became the famous French infidel, but 
who was at that time a student for the Roman 
Catholic priesthood, insisted so strongly on the 
opposite side that the professor angrily closed the 
debate, telling Renan that he relied on reason 
alone and that it would make him a great heretic. 
The Book of Job is built along the lines of such 

a conference. This dramatic poem, oldest of the 
Bible books, attempts to debate the question why 
the godly suffer. The book is a series of argu- 
ments between contending parties. First, there 
are Job and his wife in discussion; then Job and 


O)*:: of the most interesting features of 


1 | 


112 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


his three friends; then Job and Elihu; and finally 
Job and Jehovah. The main portion of the book 
is occupied with the debate between Job and his 
three friends. At one point in the argument Job 
is replying to Zophar. Zophar has suggested that 
Job is afflicted because he is a secret sinner. Job 
replies that the prosperity of the wicked refutes 
that view. They sin both secretly and openly and 
yet they succeed. On that basis, if he were a 
secret sinner, he would be prospered instead of 
cursed with misfortunes. Says Job, “The wicked 
are greatly blessed. Everything they touch turns 
to gold. So they say to God, ‘Why should we 
bother with you? We don’t need God. What 
profit should we have if we pray unto Him?” 

I take this as a challenge, today, from the op- 
posing side. They have reasons for their opposi- 
tion to prayer. As far as I have followed their 
arguments they all seem to be reduced to three: — 
first, prayer is powerless if law rules—it can’t ac- 
complish anything; second, prayer is useless if 
God is omniscient for He knows what we are 
going to say beforehand; third, prayer is imper- 
tinent if God is good; for He knows what is best 
for us and will perform all His gracious will. 
Let us look at these three objections in turn. 


I. Prayer is Powerless if Law Rules the 
W orld: 
Let us go and sit under the pulpit of the here- 


OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER 113 


tic or doubter for a moment and listen to him: 
“Let me read from Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam: 


‘O mother—praying God will save 
Thy sailor—while thy head 1s bowed, 
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud 
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.’ 


“See the helplessness of that mother’s prayer. O 
the irony of it! Her sailor boy died from nat- 
ural causes and God was powerless to interfere. 
God is like a benevolent old gentleman kindly dis- 
posed and all that, trying to stop the machinery of 
a world whose engine drives with the regularity 
of aclock. What can He do? Nothing but wave 
His hands in dumb despair. 

“But let them go on praying, for it helps them 
to feel that they are talking to somebody or some- 
thing. It’s a helpful soliloquy—the reflex action 
is beneficial. It’s mere dumb-bell exercise, as 
some one has said. When a man lifts dumb-bells, 
he doesn’t expect to strike anybody but just to 
strengthen his own muscle and so it is with 
prayer. They are like the Pharisee who stood 
and prayed with himself. They are like a man 
who talks into a telephone receiver, failing to get 
Central but comforted by hearing himself talk and 
vainly imagining that somebody else is hearing 
him.” 

Well, we know the familiar argument. It is 
simply the deification of law. Nature follows the 


114 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


tracks laid down, the iron tracks of convention 
and custom and no switchman can turn the train 
to the right or to the left. And yet that’s exactly 
what does happen. When you ride on the train 
you see it. The force of the engine, the law of 
force will pull the train straight ahead, mile after 
mile, but personality, in the shape of a brakeman, 
opens the switch to the right and personality in 
the shape of the engineer, slows down the speed 
—and the first thing you know the great caravan 
has responded to the prayer of the train dispatcher 
who has begged the engine and train to wait on 
a siding until another train has passed by. Men 
have taken the great power of steam and co- 
operated with it and conquered it and made it do 
their will. So they make Niagara light the streets 
and run the cars of Buffalo. So they have made 
submarines and airplanes and telephones and radio 
possible. Every invention and convenience that 
we use in civilized life is man’s victory over nature. 
My house is on a hill and yet in the highest part 
of that house I turn on a faucet and lo, water runs 
up hill right into my room, to wash my hands. 
Our forefathers would have called that a miracle 
—but it isn’t—it is simply man’s combination of 
contradictory forces, to make nature do what she 
herself would never do. 

Now the twentieth century demands a big 
God. The Christian comes forward and says, “I 
present my God. He is big enough for today.” If 


OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER 115 


our God is a Person, He can surely do on a large 
scale with nature’s forces what you and I can do 
on a limited scale. A plant is a miracle to a stone, 
for the plant can grow and the stone cannot. A 
dog is a miracle to a plant, for the dog can walk 
and the plant can’t. A boy is a miracle to a dog, 
for the boy can speak and the dog can’t. A man’s 
a miracle to a boy, for the man can do many things 
the boy can’t. And Christ is a miracle to a man, 
for Christ in God can do so many things the man 
can’t. And yet, why should we imagine that the 
ladder stops when it reaches man? It’s our con- 
ceit which imagines we are at the top of the ladder. 
It’s our conceit which imagines we know all the 
laws that are to be known. Why, we are discover- 
ing new ones almost every day and they shame our 
ignorance. Why may it not be that there are 
angels and principalities and powers stretching on 
between us and God? Why may there not be 
higher laws known and used by God which make 
it possible for Him to answer prayer, just as there 
are higher laws known by us today than our fore- 
fathers knew? Many a telegram is a prayer and 
we can answer prayers today in a way which our 
grandparents could never attempt. 

What most doubters need is a larger conception 
of God. I would commend to all such the reading 
of Bishop Samuel Foss’ poem on the two boys. 


116 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


“A boy was born ’mid little things, 
Between a little world and sky, 
And dreamed not of the cosmic rings 
Round which the circling planets fly. 
He lived in hittle works and thoughts, 
Where little ventures grow and plod, 
And paced and plowed Ins little plots, 
And prayed unto Mis little God. 
But as the mighty system grew, 
His faith grew faint with many scars; 
The cosmos widened in his view, 
But God was lost among his stars. 


Another boy, in lowly days, 

As he, to little things was born, 

But gathered lore in woodland ways, 
And from the glory of the morn. 
As wider skies broke on his view, 
God greatened in his growing mind; 
Each year he dreamed his God anew, 
And left his older God behind. 

He saw the boundless scheme dilate, 
In star and blossoms, sky and clod; 
And, as the universe grew great, 

He dreamed for it a greater God.” 


II. Prayer Is Useless If God Is Ommscient: 

This is a very superficial objection when you 
come to analyze it. The objector says something 
like this: According to your view God knows all 


- se 


OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER 117 


things. Very well then, He is acquainted with the 
thoughts of men. He knows the desires and in- 
tentions of your heart. He knows just what you 
are going to say and hence your confession or peti- 
tion to Him is just so much wasted time. It isn’t 
wasted time to tell the grocer what to send you 
for he can’t know beforehand what you want, but 
it is different with God. Why then pray? 

Well, let us answer this question by raising an- 
other: Is the imparting of information the main 
requisite in dealings between friends? You go 
to see your friend tomorrow evening. He has 
been reading the afternoon paper as well as you 
have. You do not go to him as a vender of news 
or a lecturer on topics of the day, but just to 
commune with him as a friend. You get a love 
letter, let us say. Does it contain any news? No, 
just the old, old story. You know he loves you— 
why, he has told you so a thousand times; and yet 
people do not cease to write love letters simply 
because they do not contain forecasts of the 
weather. No, there are many other things to 
prayer beside information. There is communion 
which is as much desired by our great Friend as 
it is by our human friends. 

Curiously enough, Jesus Himself used this very 
argument, namely, God’s omniscience, as a plea 
for prayer rather than an argument against it. 
He says, “Your heavenly Father knoweth what 
things ye have need of before ye ask Him. There- 


118 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


fore be not as the heathen are who use vain repe- 
titions and think they shall be heard for their much 
speaking. Be not like unto them, but after this 
manner pray ye, ‘Our Father, etc.’”’ The Master 
evidently saw no conflict between God’s omnis- 
cience and our prayer. The solution of the diffi- 
culty is that prayer is a two-sided performance. 
Of course God’s side is all right. He knows all 
about us, but our side needs the tonic of prayer 
to get us in shape to receive the things he has given 
us. For infinite wisdom and love cannot do much 
for a human life that has shut its doors against 
their blessed ministry. When you turn to the 
Bible you find that there are forty-nine special 
prayers in the Old Testament and fourteen in the 
New, making sixty-three altogether. Now these 
are not sixty-three pieces of information, sixty- 
three bits of news; but sixty-three open doors 
though which God could look into the souls of men 
_and help them with their problems. 

Read the life of Thomas Aquinas, turning now 
from sacred to secular history. Aquinas is usually 
thought of as a philosophical theologian and I 
fancy he had as logical a mind as some of the 
modern objectors to prayer. And yet his belief 
in God’s all-seeing eye did not keep him from the 
throne of grace. One who described him in his 
pulpit just before one of his sermons which seemed 
to sweep the University of Paris toward the king- 
dom of God said: ‘Men did not know as he stood 


OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER TAL9 


there with the striking eloquence of ease, that in 
the dark night, amidst the shadows of the church, 
he had wept his heart out, prostrate before the 
altar. They were not aware of the fact, but they 
were impressed by its effect.’ One who knew 
Aquinas well said after his death that he had been 
forbidden to tell much that he knew of him, but 
this he could tell—that no human talent, but prayer, 
was the secret of his great success. 

Similar is the case with Bernard of Clairvaux, 
another of the great preachers and thinkers of the 
Church. He preached one day in Paris and his 
sermon was a sheer failure, but he spent all night 
in prayer and the next day he preached with such 
power that many were converted. He wrote to a 
young abbot regarding the secret of success in 
preaching and he said, “These three abide; the 
word, example and prayer and the greatest of these _ 
is prayer.” 

Now when such men as this are so tremendously 
helped by prayer—certainly nobody could accuse 
them of deficiency of intellect—it shows that prayer 
must accomplish something besides informing God. 
What prayer accomplishes is not the information 
of God but the transformation of men. “Prayer 
changes things” we say—it doesn’t change God, 
‘but it changes men. One of the brightest girls in 
this city, a poetess, an authoress of a book on 
nervous diseases and withal almost an invalid, asked 
me the other day in her sickroom what she could 


120 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


accomplish for us in prayer. I named her some of 
the needs of the Church. I love to think of her 
lying there in her sickbed and yet lifting us in the 
arms of prayer to the throne of power. 


Ill. Prayer Is Impertinent If God Is Good: 


Let us review the argument thus far. The first 
objection is—God can’t help Himself. He is 
hemmed in by laws of nature. Yes, but we answer, 
God can answer prayer, for He is bigger than 
nature. Well, then, they ask a second question: 
Suppose God can help us but doesn’t know what 
to do! Yes, we answer, He knows all things. 
Well, then, a third query, Maybe God can help us 
and knows what to do but won’t do it because He 
is mean. Oh, but we say, God is infinite Goodness. 
Then, replies the objector, prayer is an imperti- 
nence if God is good; for He will do better for us 
than we can ask Him to. 

Rousseau took this attitude to prayer. He said, 
“I bless God but I do not pray. Why should I 
ask of Him that He would change for me the 
course of things? I who ought to love above all 
the order established by His wisdom and main- 
tained by His Providence, shall I wish that order 
to be dissolved on my account?” Well, this ob- 
jection sounds very pious. The man seems to say 
that he shrinks from prayer because it is imperti- 
nent for human ignorance to instruct divine wis- 
dom and to tell perfect Love what to do. And yet 


OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER 121 


Jesus did not refrain from prayer for this reason 
but again He used it as a plea for prayer. You 
remember His analogy. Speaking to the parents 
before Him He said, “If ye then being evil know 
how to give good gifts unto your children (pre- 
sumably because they have asked for them), how 
much more shall your Father give good things’— 
does this sentence stop there? No. “Give good 
things to them that ask Him.” | 

Goodness cannot give to those who won’t re- 
ceive and prayer puts us in a receptive mood. I 
know a father who would have given his son the 
finest education Europe could have afforded, but 
the boy wouldn’t take it. The father was good and 
wise. If the boy had prayed for an education, 
that father would have been the happiest man 
in the world. So God can’t force things on us 
unless we are in a receptive mood. Giving and re- 
ceiving is not a mechanical performance. If we 
were things, God could unlock our soul and shove 
in anything He wanted; but as we are persons 
with wills like His, He must wait on our co-oper- 
ation and there comes in prayer. 

Let us take one illustration: The goodness of 
God is seen, among other things, in the provision 
He has made for our physical health. When 
bacteria gain entrance to the blood, they are assailed 
by the white corpuscles and are eaten up by the 
corpuscles called the leucocytes which first envelop 
the germs and then digest them. Millions of these 


122 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


leucocytes concentrate in this infected area and 
engage in hand to hand fight with the bacteria. 
Perhaps no battle in history compares with the 
struggle between the bacteria and leucocytes in an 
ordinary boil. Here is a case of the automatic 
goodness of God. We don’t need to tell Him to 
start this fight. Nature starts it automatically. 
Well then, since it would be impertinent for us to 
tell God what to do, shall we let the battle proceed 
without prayer? He’s handling the situation— 
we should worry! But here comes the psycholo- 
gist and the physiologist to assure us that we can 
greatly help on the victory of health over disease 
by a prayerful attitude on our part. By prayer 
we can open up the clogged channels of our souls 
so that even the physical body will respond to the 
pressure of the divine. Prayer, then, is co-opera- 
tion with the Infinite Goodness instead of in- 
difference to it. You remember George Eliot 
represents Stradivarius, the skilful maker of 
violins, as saying that God couldn’t get along with- 
out him in the violin business, for while God gave 
men musical skill, he gave them violins on which 
to exercise that skill. And we too are just as 
necessary to the accomplishment of God’s purpose 
in the world as Stradivarius was in the musical 
world. cones, 


and 


Xx. 
SYMMETRICAL PRAYER 


» ‘HE average prayer is not a symmetrical 
prayer. It is lopsided. If a building were 
erected in the shape of the average prayer, 
it would falldown. Itis builtin arut. It follows 
the accustomed grooves and there are whole areas 
of unexplored territory it never touches. When 
Jesus said to the disciples, ‘“‘Be ye therefore per- 
fect,’ He did not mean sinless perfection but He 
meant symmetry of character. ‘Be well-rounded 
and not one-sided.” When we are told that Jesus 
increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with 
God and man, it is the same thing as though the 
Bible said “Jesus grew symmetrically, building up 
the threefold man, body, soul and spirit.” <A 
Y. M. C. A. secretary once said, ‘“We attempt to 
grow complete men—we build up not merely the 
physical, for that would produce prize-fighters; 
not merely the mental, for that would produce 
geniuses; not merely the spiritual, for that would 
make fanatics; but all three of them together and 
the result of the combination is a man.” We 
admire proportion and balance everywhere. We 
need balance in our eating, we need it in our play- 


123 





124 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


ing. -We need proportion in our architecture and 
our art. We need balance and poise in our home 
life, our religious life—everywhere. And so we 
need it in our prayers. And the only way to test 
the symmetry of our praying is to compare the 
average prayer with Christ’s great mould of prayer 
or with the great prayers of the Bible. When we 
do so we shall be amazed to discover that much of 
our praying has been warped. We harp on the 
familiar notes until the sound of our praying must 
be very monotonous to God. One of the psycholo- 
gists says that there are many stops in our organ 
we never use, many tones we never play. This is 
true in our own personalities and it is true of our 
devotions. This is one of the great arguments 
for liturgical prayer. Your Episcopal friend will 
tell you that he prefers to follow the carefully 
thought-out, predigested and well-balanced sen- 
tences of the circumference-prayers rather than the 
small arc of the circle which is often traversed by 
extempore prayer. Let us now move around the 
circle and notice some of the components of prayer. 


I. Symmetrical Prayer Includes Adoration and 
Praise: 


The Prayer House is rightly entered through 
the beautiful gates of praise. This praise-gate 
gives us a Hallelujah face and puts us in tune for 
delightful talking with God. A study of the Jewish 
prayers of the Old Testament is illuminating along 


SYMMETRICAL PRAYER 125 


this line. The act of prayer is spoken of as the 
' pouring out of the heart to God and most often 
this pouring out of the heart took the form of 
praise. The Hebrew title of the Psalter was “The 
Book of Praises,” and yet many of the Psalms are 
called prayers. Four of the Psalms are by their 
inscriptions expressly designated as prayers. The 
Jews entered into God’s gates with thanksgiving 
and into His courts with praise. 

Lady Fletcher, writing in the London Challenge, 
tells us how she has taught little children to pray 
and how she has trained them in the habit of 
thanksgiving until they look forward to prayer 
as the opportunity to thank Jesus for all He has 
given them. She uses such questions as this: 
“What shall we bring Jesus tonight, for Him to 
bless?” or ‘‘What special ‘thank-yous’ are there 
tonight?” She tells a delightful story of a child 
of three whose mother said in a pause following 
an immensely long list of “thank-yous,”’ “Is it 
Amen now, dear?” and was met by the reproach- 
ful reply, “How can it be Amen when I haven't 
yet thanked Him for the two new pockets in my 
red coat?” 

Do we not all agree that one trouble with our 
prayers is that we are long on begging and short 
on gratitude? We regard God as a paying teller 
and not as a receiving teller. We are always taking 
up collections ourselves and never think of Him 
as taking up an offering. And yet we earthly 


126 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


parents know that we like to be loved for our- 
selves and not merely for the toys we bring. We 
want to be something more than a check-book 
after all and so does God. Let us then put on the 
wedding garment of praise, the vestment of thanks- 
giving when we go to keep our engagement with 
God. Let us make a list of some of the things 
we want to thank Him for and we shall be sur- 
prised to see how delightful the conversation is. 
“Count your many blessings, 
Name them one by one, 
And it will surprise you 

What the Lord hath done.” 

Il. Symmetrical Prayer Includes Confession of 
Sin. 

How do you knock at the Door of Prayer, as 
a mere casual visitor or as a suppliant? It seems 
to me there ought to be several changes of raiment 
during a talk with God. If at times we wear the 
joyful garment of praise, again at times we should 
robe ourselves in the penitential robes of confes- 
sion. We go to the confessional just as really as 
the Romanist does; the difference being that our 
confession is made directly to God. 

Now of course if one is not burdened with a 
sense of sin, he will probably have nothing to con- 
fess. A French prince who was visiting the arsenal 
at Toulon was asked by the commandant to release 
any prisoner he desired. Accordingly the prince 
talked with one after another and every one with 


SYMMETRICAL PRAYER 127 


whom he conversed had some tale of grievance, 
till at last he came to one man who said: “Sir, I 
have been a bad man, guilty of all, more than ] 
am charged with. It’s a mercy I have not been 
broken on the wheel.” “Here,” said the prince, 
“is the man to release.” Is not this just exactly 
what the promise says in I John 1:9, “If we con- 
fess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive.” 
All of the other prisoners missed the chance of 
being released through want of confession of sin. 

The twentieth century does not emphasize the 
reality of sin—does not underscore the red word 
so that we do not have the agonizing contritions 
of David in the fifty-first Psalm and of Augustine 
in his “Confessions.” And yet, sin is just the same 
today as it ever was. In one of Ellen Fowler’s 
novels, a father and son are discussing the ques- 
tion and the father says, ‘““The teaching of modern 
philosophy is that what is done is done and what 
we have written we have written and that there 
is no atonement for the deed once accomplished ; 
and no washing out of the handwriting against us. 
But I have not so learned Christ.” “Then do you 
believe that what is done can ever be undone? 
Surely that is impossible,’”’ says the boy. Then the 
father replies, “I do not wish to sprinkle the way 
of life with rosewater. I know that if a man 
breaks the law of nature, he will be punished to 
the uttermost, for there is no forgiveness in nature. 
I know that if a man breaks the laws of society 


128 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


he will find neither remission nor mercy for there 
is no forgiveness in society. But I believe that 
if a man breaks the laws of God, his transgression 
can be taken away as though it had never been.” 
“It is a grand Gospel that you preach, father, and 
seems almost too good to be true,’”’ says the son, 
and the older man replies, “Nothing is too good 
to be true. The truth is the best of everything.” 
“When ye pray say, Forgive us our debts as we 
forgive our debtors.” 


Ill. Symmetrical Prayer Includes Intercession: 


Do you remember that strong statement of 
Isaiah 59:16, “Jehovah wondered that there was 
no intercessor”? The Almighty is represented as 
being surprised that His listening ear did not catch 
the pleading tones of somebody praying for some- 
body else. Couple with the Old Testament verse 
of Isaiah this New Testament verse of Paul, “God 
forbid that I should sin against Jehovah in ceasing 
to pray for you,” as Paul would paraphrase these 
words of Samuel. You remember how he told the 
Christians of Corinth and Thessalonica and 
Philippi how unceasingly he mentioned them in 
prayer. In fact, Paul said to Timothy, “I exhort 
that first of all, supplications, intercessions, 
prayers, be made for all men.” 

Let us face this query honestly: How much 
do we pray for others? Are our hands so full of 
our own burdens as we lift them to God’s eye that 


SYMMETRICAL PRAYER 129 


we have no space left to lift the burdens of others? 
Is much of our prayer utterly selfish? Someone 
has well said, ‘‘No man is the whole of himselfi— 
his friends are the rest of him.’’ Professor Jones, 
of Haverford, says that in a world like this where 
we are so closely bound by ties to everybody else, 
that prayer is just as normal as gravitation. For 
just as gravitation draws us all together toward 
the center of the earth, so prayer draws us all 
together toward the center of heaven which 1s 
God in Christ. The old Latin proverb said, “One 
man is no man at all.” Jesus would seem to have 
had the same idea, for He said, ““When ye pray, 
say ‘our Father.’”’ It’s the plural number all the 
way through—the socialism of prayer in which 
we pray for one another. It was said at the time 
of the death of Robert McCheyne, the Scotch 
preacher, that perhaps the heaviest blow to his 
brethren, his people and the land was the loss of 
his intercession. Cromwell, although not usually 
so regarded, was another interceding soul. Two 
or three days before he died, so the Chronicler 
tells us, his heart was “‘carried out for God and 
his people,” and this was his prayer in part: “Lord, 
though I am a miserable and wretched creature, 
I am in covenant with Thee through grace; and 
I may, I will come to Thee for Thy people ... 
Lord, however Thou dost dispose of me, continue 
and go on to do good for them. Give them con- 
sistency of judgment, one heart and mutual love 


130 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


and go on to deliver them, and with the work of 
reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious 
in the world. Teach those who look too much on 
Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself. 
Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of 
a poor worm, for they are Thy people too. And 
pardon the folly of this short prayer even for 
Jesus Christ’s sake. And give us a good night if 
it be Thy pleasure; Amen.” 


IV. Symmetrical Prayer Includes Communion: 


What do we mean by Communion? We mean 
sitting down and talking things over with a friend, 
letting ourselves be relaxed and natural, knowing 
that the friend will separate the grain from the 
chaff ; keeping the one and blowing the other away. 
I think we make a mistake in getting the idea that 
Communion merely means the celebration of the 
Sacrament and we say, “Oh yes, I commune four 
times a year.” Communion is not an outward act, 
it is an attitude of the soul in which we reach out 
and talk to God because we enjoy His presence 
and not because of the things we can extort from 
Him by begging. Communion is the outgrowth 
and fruit of personal acquaintance and cannot be 
indulged in by perfect strangers. 

Would that we might read some of the great 
books of devotion which have been written by these 
friends of God who know Him best and see what 
they have to say concerning the preciousness of 


SYMMETRICAL PRAYER 131 


this fellowship with Him—such books as the “Con- 
fession,’ of Augustine, and the “Imitation of 
Christ,’ by Thomas 4 Kempis, and “The Practice 
of the Presence of God,” by Brother Lawrence, 
the man who for thirty years was a cook in the 
kitchen of a Carmelite monastery, who prayed 
without ceasing, making every moment a season 
of fellowship with God in the midst of humdrum 
toil. Hear him as he writes these words: ‘Were 
God to put me in hell, I should not be anxiously 
concerned; for He would be with me and His 
presence would be paradise. He will do with me 
what pleaseth Him.’”’ Death cannot trouble a soul 
like that, for it means only the presence of the One 
whom, having not seen, we have loved. Listen 
to Horace Bushnell: “I fell into the habit of talk- 
ing with God and do it now without knowing.” 
That’s fellowship, not ritual. Says Fanny Crosby: 


“O the pure delight of a single hour, 
That before Thy throne I spend; 
When I kneel in prayer and with Thee, my God, 
I commune as friend with friend.” 


All through the centuries God has been satisfying 
those who gave Him a chance to talk with them. 
In the fourth century, Augustine tried it and here 
is his testimony, “Give me Thyself, without whom, 
though Thou shouldest give me all that Thou hast 
made, I would not be satisfied.” In the fifteenth 
century Thomas 4 Kempis tried this fellowship 


132 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


and he said that anything less than God Himself 
was small and unsatisfactory. In the nineteenth 
century, George Matheson, too, tried it and he told 
the Lord he wanted Him to come into his heart 
whether He came in sunshine or in rain; for he 
said, “It is Thee and not Thy gifts that I crave.” 
And so don’t you see that these people were not 
troubled about the problems of prayer. Prayer 
to them was not a problem but a Person. My 
suggestion to those modern folks who are so 
troubled about the difficulties of prayer would be 
that if they knew God, they would like to visit 
with Him. | 

“Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at 
peace.”’ 


V. Symmetrical Prayer Includes Petition: 


We usually do not drop in to see the grocer just 
for a friendly visit; we never think of troubling 
him until we need groceries. We usually do not 
call on the doctor just for fun—we go because we 
need his medicine for our sick body. We certainly 
don’t call on the undertaker because we enjoy his 
society—we go when someone has died. So it is 
usually with prayer. Without intending to we 
lower God to the level of the merchant or the shop- 
keeper and we usually don’t go to His shop until 
we need something out of His stock of wares. 
This chapter has shown that we ought to go for 
other reasons, but now at the close we suggest that 


SYMMETRICAL PRAYER 133 


one reason why we should visit God in prayer is 
the pressure of our need. 

Chauncey Depew tells in a lecture of an expe- 
rience he had with Abraham Lincoln. As Secretary 
of State of New York he went to Washington in 
connection with some important business during 
the stirring days of the Civil War. When pre- 
paring to depart he called on the President. Lincoln 
had a number of visitors when Depew arrived and 
he asked him what he wanted. Depew assured 
Lincoln that he wanted nothing but had merely 
called to pay his respects before departing. Lincoln 
said, “Sir, it is such a luxury to receive a visit 
from one who doesn’t want anything that I hope 
you may be able to wait till I have dismissed these 
other callers—I should like to have a talk with 
you.” After the visitors had gone, Lincoln threw 
himself down on a couch and drawing up his knees 
and encircling them with his arms, he rocked back 
and forth for two hours continuing the conversa- 
tion. We can’t blame Mr. Lincoln for wanting to 
talk to somebody who just wanted to see him and 
not his gifts. And if God were less than divine, 
He certainly would lose patience with our much 
begging. But blessed be His name, He does not. 

Listen to a few of His words inviting us to 
come: 

“Call unto me and I will answer thee.”’—Jer. 
B5i:3; 

“Ack and it shall be given you.”—Matt. 7:7. 


134 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


“All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, 
believing, ye shall receive.”—Matt. 21:22. 

“If two of you shall agree on earth as touching 
anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for 
them of my Father.’—Matt. 18:19. 

Nothing could be plainer than our Father’s de- 
sire to have His children come and tell Him all 
their need. Let us go then believing that if He 
hadn’t wanted us to come, He would never have 
invited us. 


“Come, my soul, thy suit prepare, 
Jesus loves to answer prayer; 
He Himself has bid thee pray— 
Therefore will not say thee nay.” 


XI. 


HOW SHALL WE PRAY? 


partment Store of Prayer the other day and 

asked him to show me the assortment of 
prayers which were on hand which had come in 
that day for His perusal and answering. It seemed 
to me I saw a strange assortment indeed. What 
a conglomerate collection it was. Here were a lot 
of little short prayers that looked like telegrams 
—they evidently had come hot from the heart and 
were right to the point. Over here were a lot of 
long prayers in which people had taken the Lord 
on a tour of the universe as though they could 
be heard for their much speaking. Here again 
was a bunch of formal prayers—they were just 
as beautiful as a casket and just as cold and dead. 
Here was another contrasted pile—their grammar 
was poor and their sentences needed punctuation 
and revising, but they were wet with tears and I 
noticed the Lord looking them over carefully while 
He paid no attention to these masterpieces of 
rhetoric by their side. Here was another collec- 
tion of hurried prayers that somebody had dashed 
off in an emergency so hastily that he forgot to 


] DREAMED I stepped into God’s great De- 


135 


136 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


put on his return address. Here were some selfish 
prayers so full of “I want this” and ‘I want that,”’ 
that God laid them to one side on a dusty shelf as 
He couldn’t use them. On the other side of the 
room was a great collection of earnest, sincere, 
thoughtful petitions—I thought I could see the 
trace of blood on them for they were all addressed 
in the name of Jesus and had come home by the 
way of the cross. There were others that were 
labelled spirit-filled prayers, for they had evidently 
been suggested and indited by the Holy Spirit. 
It was a fascinating experience to spend a while 
in God’s Receiving Room and I came away wonder- 
ing at the patience of God and thankful that I 
didn’t have so much mail to open every day. Maybe 
it was after some such visit that Edmund Vance 
Cooke wrote his lines on “Prayer.” 


“Some people think prayer is a telephone, 
A. patent transmitter to hire or own; 
And at every hint of a small desire, 
They call up the busy Central wire 
To plug into the Great White Throne. 


Some people think prayer is a flying machine, 
Impressive in power but inclined to careen; 
And tf any part of the motor snaps, 
The whole thing falls in a huge collapse 
With your wrecked hopes somewhere in between. 


HOW SHALL WE PRAY? 137 


But maybe prayer is a road to rise, 

A mountain path leading toward the skies, 
To assist the spirit who truly tries, 

But it isn’t a shibboleth, creed nor code; 
li isn’t a method; it is only a road, 

And perhaps the reward of the spirit who tries 
Is not the goal but the exercise!” 


This all brings up the question: What is prayer 
to you and me? for what it is determines how we 
shall use it. Is it a private wire to heaven which 
you can monopolize, or is it a party line which 
we (plural) share together? Is ita literary essay 
or a lawyer’s argument or a child’s plea? Is ita 
life preserver to be grabbed at the last minute 
before the ship goes down, marked “Do not use 
except in emergencies,” or is it like our daily bread 
and regular exercise to be taken systematically ? 
That is, is it medicine or food? Is God an under- 
taker or a friend? Is it a spoken thing which can 
be got to heaven only by word of the lips, or 1s 
it an acted thing which is going to heaven hourly, 
whether we will or no, by the aim and drift of 
our lives? Well, these are too many questions 
for one short chapter. Let us, however, stop long 
enough to inspect three or four varieties of prayer. 


I. For One Thing, There Is Secret or Indiwidual 
Prayer: 


There is one kind of place which is being steadily 


138 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


driven from the modern world and that is the 
lonely place. Cities are taking the place of the 
countryside, and noise, the place of silence. So 
much that those churches are very welcome which 
stand on the wide boulevards with open doors and 
with this inviting sign, “(Come in and rest and 
pray.” It is a great blessing to have a desert on 
Fifth Avenue—a lonesome place where we can 
converse with God. 


“With Thee amid the crowd 
That throngs the busy mart, 
Lo hear Thy voice when time’s is loud, 
Speak sofily to my heart.” 


Many people are embarrassed by the crowd. 
They cannot lead in public prayer. I have some- 
times wondered whether Isaiah had this in mind 
when he wrote in his thirty-second chapter, ““The 
tongue of the stammerer shall be ready to speak 
plainly.” The quiet place allows even the stammer- 
ing man to speak to God. 

One of the great reforms which Jesus initiated 
was the making of religion an inward rather than 
an outward thing and in nothing was this exter- 
nality of religion more emphasised in Christ’s time 
than in the customs of prayer. The Pharisee 
punctiliously prayed at the third, sixth and ninth 
hour wherever he might happen to be. Usually, 
he contrived to be in some conspicuous position so 
that all the spectators might be duly impressed 


HOW SHALL WE PRAY? 139 


with his extraordinary piety. The same thing may 
be seen today in any city of the Mohammedan 
world. The self-righteous religionist brings forth 
his prayer carpet into a conspicuous place in the 
market or on the street and at the hour of prayer 
goes through his devotions in the public eye. But 
how different was Jesus’ idea when He urged upon 
His followers the solitude of the shut door. “Enter 
into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, 
pray to thy Father who seeth in secret and He 
shall reward thee openly.” In the average Jewish 
house was a solitary chamber or a roof-top where 
one might get away from the madding crowd and 
pray. 


“By all means, sometimes use to be alone. 
Salute thyself, see what thy soul doth wear.” 


Now herein is a great truth and one worth 
remembering: that through prayer man and God 
may have fellowship with one another— intimate, 
personal fellowship. It’s a great thing to have a 
friend with whom you can talk freely, without 
measuring your words. If you will read some- 
time the three Epistles of John, you will find that 
never once in these three letters does John speak 
of Jesus as Lord or of the disciples as servants— 
but on the other hand these letters are epistles of 
friendship with Christ. Dryden was once describ- 
ing his friendship for his truest friend and he said, 


140 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


“We were so mixed up as meeting streams—both 
to ourselves were lost. We were one mass. We 
could not give or take but from the same, for he 
was I, I, he.” Is not this the same thing Augustine 
said, “Lord, let me do Thy will as if it were my 
will, so that Thou canst do my will as if it were 
Thy will.’ Such is the communion, the partner- 
ship which is possible to those who cultivate the 
companionship of Christ in prayer. 


“In the secret of His presence how my soul delights 

to lide! 

Oh, how precious are the lessons which I learn — 
at Jesus’ side. 

My Saviour rests beside me, as we hold com- 
munion sweet: 

If I tried I could not utter what He says when 
thus we meet.” 


If. Then Again There Is United, Corporate and 
Social Prayer: 


Plural prayer is just as important as singular 
prayer. Dr. Jowett preached once on Plural Prayer 
at a Bible conference and he referred to his theme 
as the Socialism of Prayer. His text was, “When 
ye pray, say our Father,” and he noted that all the 
pronouns in the Lord’s Prayer which refer to 
mankind were in the plural number. He said 
that this revelation of plural prayer had changed 
his life since it came to him a few years before. 


HOW SHALL WE PRAY? 141 


He said he no longer prayed for a man but with 
him. One of the refined Christian women of 
Birmingham, England, so grasped the idea of cor- 
porate prayer that when she prayed for the drunken 
women of her city she said thus: “God pity us 
when the passion is upon us. God pity us when the 
smell blows out upon ts from the open door of 
the saloon.” She herself never knew the agony 
of being tempted by the odors of the public house 
but she so entered in spirit into the feeling of those 
with whom she prayed that she said “us” instead 
Chey tnen5 5) ))) 

Do you recall that great word of Jesus in the 
eighteenth chapter of Matthew? He said, “If 
two of you shall agree on earth as touching any- 
thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them 
of my Father.” It is instructive here to notice 
that the word translated “agree” is the Greek verb 
“symphonize.” ‘That suggests two sounds in har- 
mony with each other. God’s ear doubtless delights 
to hear solo prayers, as we have seen just now, 
but did you ever think of the music of prayer as it 
rises to God and of how He must enjoy duets and 
trios and quartets and great choruses of prayer? 
So the next time you see a great congregation 
bowing in prayer, led by the pastor who is speak- 
ing for them, just think of it as a great chorus, 
every member of which is symphonising or agree- 
ing with every other member so that there shall be 
no discordant note in the whole crowd. One of 


142 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


the things which produced Pentecost was the mar- 
velous symphony of the prayers of the faithful; 
for we read that they were not only in one place 
but also in one mood: “They were all with one 
accord (chord) in one place.” 

The psychologist comes along at this point with 
his explanation of corporate prayer. He defines 
prayer as the putting forth of psychic energy and 
says that its efficiency is in proportion to its energy. 
Union is strength here as elsewhere. Somebody 
has compared the co-operative prayer to Niagara, 
which, after all, is just a collection of raindrops 
working together—all going the same way at the 
same time. One drop couldn’t turn the turbine, 
but millions can. So it is that thousands of Chris- 
tians uniting in plural or co-operative prayer can 
do more than they could individually. They have 
in some meetings in England what they call 
“guided prayer.” The people sit together in cor- 
porate silence while the leader suggests certain 
topics for prayer and the people unitedly pray for 
these in turn, trusting in the Master’s promise that 
where two or three are met together there is He 
in the midst of them. One argument against 
liturgic and in favor of free prayer is that new 
life is born every time a company of Christian 
people come together and the liturgical prayers 
written years ago by individual Christians can’t 
express this united life. 


HOW SHALL WE PRAY? 143 


Ill. There Is What We Might Call Emergency 
or Crisis Prayer: 


Henry Clay Trumbull tells us that a soldier in 
the Civil War, wounded in a terrific battle at Fort 
Wagner, was asked by an army chaplain, “Do you 
ever pray?’ The answer was “Sometimes. I 
prayed last Saturday night when we were in that 
fight at Wagner. I guess everybody prayed there.” 
This is a common experience but it is much older 
than the Civil War. We find it as long ago in 
history as the days of the one hundred and seventh 
Psalm, for there the writer tells us that when men 
go down to the sea in ships and the waves rise 
up so high that their soul melts within them, then 
they cry unto the Lord in their trouble. Shake- 
speare said the same thing in his day: “At their 
wits’ end, all men pray.” 


“The common language of mankind 
In peril, want or woe is prayer.” 


Isaiah said it too: “Lord, in trouble have they 
visited Thee; they poured out a prayer when Thy 
chastening was upon them.” 

An infidel sheet in Boston once said, ‘“The whole 
teaching of free religion on prayer is concentrated 
in this short maxim, ‘Never pray if you can help 
it.’ In other words, don’t pray until you have 
done everything else. If a storm breaks at sea, 
use the wireless and the lifeboats and the pumps 


144 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


and the life-preservers and everything under heaven 
you can think of and if all else fails and there is 
positively nothing else to do, then pray. In the 
hospital, call the doctor, obey the nurse, take the 
medicine, follow the treatment and leave all to 
science till science comes to the end of her tether, 
and then, as a last resort, do pray. If a church 
wants a revival, get a well-known evangelist, ad- 
vertise, have a big choir, sensational subjects— 
and then, if all the human machinery fails to 
produce a revival, it might be well enough to call 
on God. I’ve heard of physicians being called in 
at the eleventh hour to save a hopeless case. How 
complimented God must feel to be dragged in just 
as an emergency relief! You know how pleased 
you would feel to be treated by your friends this 
way and you can’t blame God for feeling equally 
pleased, can your 

A Scotsman has written a letter to an American 
friend describing one of the Scottish church serv- 
ices during the war. There was the infidel who 
never went to church before but who now sits in 
the kirk every Sunday and wipes away a tear as 
ke hears the minister pray for the king’s forces. 
“There comes an hour in life,” says the fetter, 
“when the heart realises that instinct is mightier 
far than logic. With us in the parish churches 
of Scotland, the great thing has been the sermon. 
But today it is different. The great thing now is 
prayer.” So it is always—“a crisis shakes loose 


ae 


HOW SHALL WE PRAY? = 145 


the tendency to pray.’ And while God would 
rather have men come at the eleventh hour than 
not to come at all, how much wiser to prepare 
abundantly in due time! This brings us to the last 
point, namely: 


IV. There Is Finally, Systematic or Regular 
Prayer. 


Suppose you quit eating until your hunger be- 
come so great that you are driven to food as a 
starving man and that you make it the rule of 
your life never to eat until business and pleasure 
and all other engagements are gotten out of the 
way. Suppose you never wash your hands until 
they become so filthy you are conscious of their 
uncleanness. Suppose you never kiss your wife 
till driven to do so by her tears. Suppose the 
farmer never milked the cow except when the 
notion struck him. Suppose the sun rose when- 
ever it got ready to, one day at five a. m., another 
at nine and another at noon. Suppose the railway 
trains ran according to the engineer’s whim. Well, 
such a world as this would be a world without 
system or plan and we should say as the Phila- 
delphia tramp did, “Holy Moses, what a system!’ 

And yet, that’s the way we pray—why not do 
other things that way? No, we rise regularly, 
eat regularly, work regularly, play regularly, sleep 
regularly. Why not put some system into our 
praying just as we do into our eating and sleeping 


146 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


and toiling? I select two men in the Bible, Daniel 
in the Old Testament and Paul in the New Testa- 
ment who did this thing. We read that Daniel 
kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed 
and gave thanks before his God. That is, Daniel 
did with the impulse of prayer what we do with the 
impulse of hunger; he laid down tracks in his life 
along which it could proceed regularly rather than 
to allow it to run at random. So Paul, in writing 
to the Ephesian and other churches, tells the people 
how regularly he remembers them in his prayers. 
The thing that was an impulse in the pagan has 
become a habit to Paul. We are pretty largely 
creatures of habit and if we can get the right habits 
set up as a mould into which to pour the plastic 
material of our lives, we shall be blest indeed. 
We ought not to leave religion to guess work any 
more than we do eating or sleeping. 

Austin Phelps has used the following illustra- 
tion: In the vestibule of St. Peter’s, at Rome, is 
a doorway which is walled up and marked with 
across. It is open but four times in a hundred 
years. On Christmas Eve once in twenty-five 
years, the Pope approaches it in princely state, 
with the retinue of cardinals in attendance and 
begins the demolition of the door by striking it 
three times with a silver hammer. When the 
passage is opened, the multitude pass into the 
nave of the cathedral and up to the altar by a path 
which the majority of them never used before and 


HOW SHALL WE PRAY? 147 


never will use again. Imagine that the way to the 
throne of grace were like the Porta Sancta, in- 
accessible save once in a quarter of a century. 
Conceive that it were now ten years since you or 
I or any other sinner had been permitted to pray 
and that fifteen long years must drag themselves 
away before we could venture again to approach 
God and that at the most we couldn’t hope to pray 
more than two or three times in a lifetime! With 
what solicitude we should wait for the coming 
of that holy day! 

And yet, the Holy Gate is open at all hours of 
the day or night. Every pilgrim who knocks is 
admitted, if he comes in the name of Christ. God 
grant there may be some new voices added to 
the chorus of prayer. Let us pass in through 
the golden portal of God’s loving welcome up the 
long aisle to His waiting arms. Whosoever will, 
may come. 


“O all-embracing Mercy, 
Thou ever open door— 
What can I do without Thee, 
When heart and eyes run oer? 
When all things seem against me 
To drive me to despair, 
I know one door 1s open, 
One ear will hear my prayer.” 


Das OT. 
PRAYER AND WORRY. 


F I WERE to suggest one of the most im- 

portant texts for these care-filled days I would 

name Philippians 4:6, ‘Be careful for noth- 
ing.’ The Bible is not a book of anxiety. The 
word “careful” occurs only seven times in the whole 
Book and the exact word of this text occurs only 
twice. Martha stands out in the New Testament 
as the woman who was careful to the extent of 
distraction. You remember how worried she got 
when she was busy entertaining Jesus. She had 
a case of nerves because Mary didn’t help her more 
with the cooking. Mary was more interested in 
books than in biscuits, and books got on Martha’s 
nerves, She spoke impatiently to Jesus and the 
Master replied, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful 
and troubled about many things.’’ In other words, 
let’s do without biscuits for supper rather than have 
nervous prostration. 

But there are so many Marthas today to whom 
Jesus has not spoken directly by word of mouth 
that this chapter is necessary. This is Martha's 
chapter, not Mary’s. Mary, if you are reading, 
you who never get worried even though the door 


148 


PRAYER AND WORRY 149 


bell, the phone bell, and the ice man are all calling 
at the same time—you who never get cross either 
when the landlord raises the rent or the singer 
next door raises a tune or the children raise a 
racket—well, I’m sorry but the message isn’t meant 
for you. If you haven’t a nerve in your body or 
a wrinkle on your brow or a gray hair on your head 
or a sleepless night in your calendar, then just 
endure the message as you do the postman when 
he brings your neighbour’s letter to your address. 
But I suspect there’s a little of the Martha in us 
all and that there is nobody who is all Mary. 
Worry has been called the great American 
disease—but that’s a libel—it’s a great human 
disease. Read as far back as you will in the 
annals of men and you find the curse of the 
knitted brow. Horace writes so much about “atra 
cura,” “black care,’ which, like a shadow, pursues 
men’s footsteps everywhere. Plato said that even 
kings worried: “If we could examine the heart 
of a king, we would find it full of scars and black 
wounds.” William E. Gladstone at the height of 
his fame said he was leading a dog’s life. Dr. 
Deems said his idea of heaven was a place where 
there were no more letters to write. Sir James 
Simpson’s idea of peace was a long jaunt without 
a sick patient lying at the other end of it. Matthew 
Arnold was so hard to satisfy that when Mark 
Twain heard of his death he said, “Poor Arnold, 
he will go to heaven and it won’t please him.” 


150 SCIHNCHE AND PRAYER 


Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, used to say 
to his medical students, ‘““Young men, have two 
pockets in your coat—a small pocket for your fees 
and a large pocket for your annoyances.” We all 
need a large ice-cold pocket for our worries where 
we can deposit them till they have cooled down and 
the chances are when we take them out and look 
at them in a normal temperature we shall throw 
them away. 

This thing of worry is becoming such a problem 
that both business and religion are attempting to 
remove it from the human race. I was amazed 
some time ago to discover that the Guaranty Trust 
Company, of New York City, had discovered by 
a statistical study of its business that unless the 
employees’ personal troubles are looked after, their 
anxieties will show up on the debit side of the 
ledger. Worry makes people forget to do things 
at the proper time; they add up a column of figures 
wrong or they spoil materials and machinery. 
Hence this company advises that every concern 
make the straightening out of personal troubles 
a part of its business. Religion also is giving this 
subject special concern. Christian Science and New 
Thought owe much of their popularity to their 
successful emphasis on this phase of religion. To 
be sure they have made no improvement on the 
ninety-first Psalm in the Old Testament and the 
sixth chapter of Matthew in the New Testament, 
but so many people had forgotten that these verses 


PRAYER AND WORRY 151 


were there that they needed to be reminded of them. 
And so they have established “Don’t Worry Clubs’ 
and other such things where a frown is forbidden 
and a wrinkle causes expulsion for life. I read, 
however, of one lady who joined one such club 
and then described her experience as follows: 


“I joined the new “Don't Worry” Club and now 
I hold my breath; 

I am so scared for fear I'll worry, that I’m 
worried most to death.” 


But I suggest something better than the “Don’t 
Worry Club” today and that’s the “Do Pray Club.” 
Perhaps you'll be more interested in my organiza- 
tion if I tell you a little more about our threefold 
motto. It is this: ‘Be careful for nothing; be 
prayerful for everything; be thankful for any- 
thing.” Such was Spurgeon’s outline on this, our 
scripture of today. I present a different outline 
—a bunch of sweet peas, or panic, prayer and 
peace. The first thing I want to do is to face the 
disease; second, apply the remedy, and third, note 
the convalescence. First then: Worry is one of the 
cardinal sins of the day; second, Prayer is the 
cure for worry; third, Peace is the result of prayer. 


I. Worry is One of the Cardinal Sins of the 
Day: 


Worry might be defined as the effort to live in 
three tenses at the same time. Now God might 


152 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


have made us that way—but He didn’t. He made 
us one-tense folks and that is the present tense. 
Bob Burdette said there were two days he never 
worried about: one of the days was Yesterday, 
which was now dead and buried in God’s cemetery 
of the past tense. The other was Tomorrow, which 
was still hidden in the hollow of God’s hand and 
was not born yet. So the only day left that wasn’t 
God’s was Today and he was so busy working 
today that he didn’t have time to worry. Conse- 
quently he never worried. Worry then is really 
stealing something from God. It’s a case of a 
little child trying to steer the car which father 
alone knows how to drive. 

Christ’s teaching on worry is found in the sixth 
chapter of Matthew. It contains a warning against 
three kinds of anxiety and when you stop to analyze 
the subject, these are the three major worries of 
life. The first set of worries which Jesus mentions 
are business worries. He says we are not to be 
supremely concerned about either money or food 
—and one or the other of these two things is the 
goal and object of every business enterprise ever 
started. In this connection there are at least two 
things we shouldn’t worry about; one group of 
happenings are the things we can’t help (of course 
it is foolish to bother about them) and the other 
group are the things we can help, where work 
and not worry is the demand of the hour. Then 
Jesus turns to a second group of bogies and He 


PRAYER AND WORRY 153 


says we shouldn’t worry about our personal appear- 
ance and health. Solomon, in all his glory, couldn’t 
compare with the lilies of the field and no man 
by much worry can add one cubit to his stature. 
Modern psychology confirms Christ here for it 
shows the interaction of body and mind. Optimism 
means health usually and pessimism sickness. The 
third package of worries which Christ would take 
from us is Tomorrow. Daily strength for daily 
needs is Christ’s philosophy of life. Sufficient 
unto today is the evil thereof. So the Master says 
that anxiety is a sin—it is doubt of our Father’s 
loving care. And the Church has strangely neg- 
lected the teaching of Christ. That is why out- 
side agencies have sprung up to stem the tide of 
anxious care and recall Christians to quietness and 
poise. Ina Christian Science Church I once read 
the words, “Divine Love always has met and 
always will meet every human need.” But I don’t 
need to go to Christian Science to find that. It’s 
right here in the sixth chapter of Matthew. It 
is only wanting to be acted upon. Christ says that 
the endless pursuit of things—possessions, was the 
pagan ideal of blessedness but He came to show 
men that satisfaction comes from a right relation 
with God as Father. 

This third package of worries is, I suppose, the 
largest of all. Most robbers we dread are not just 
around the bend of the road; and when we get 
there we often find the road clear. One Mrs. 


154 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


Silas Bennett is described by Ruth Cameron as 
such a worrier. After she had met with an acci- 
dent by falling on the meeting-house steps she 
said to her neighbours, “I’ve raised three girls and 
four boys, expectin’ every time they’d be twins and 
red-headed like their Grandpa Bennett and yet they 
ain’t. And I’ve worried considerable over small- 
pox breaking out in my big family, but so far 
t'ain’t. Last summer I was real melancholic my- 
self fearing I’d got an appendix, but I guess I 
ain't. And through it all it never once occurred 
to me that I’d be the one to fall through them 
rotten old meetin’-house steps and break my leg 
in two places, but I did.’ How often like Mrs. 
Bennett we worry over the wrong things. What a 
lot of energy has been wasted over things that 
never materialized. There’s no use to try to look 
over the high picket-fence which separates today 
from tomorrow. My, [I’m glad enough tomorrow 
is in somebody else’s hands, for today is all I can 
take care of at one time. Let God do the worry- 
ing about tomorrow until it becomes today. 

The “American Magazine” asked the question 
once: “Why fret?’ “Are the trains too slow for 
you? Remember that Julius Caesar with all his 
court never traveled very fast. Are your wages too 
small? Why, in Europe people are glad to make a 
living. Are the lights too dim? Well, David 
wrote his Psalms by the light of a smoky torch. 
Are you ugly? Well, Cleopatra was, too, but she 


PRAYER AND WORRY _— 155 


bewitched two emperors. Are you cold? The sol- 
diers of Valley Forge walked barefoot on the ice 
and snow. Are youhungry? Yes, but children in 
India are starving for want of a crust of bread. 
Are you tired? Jacob was tired, but he dreamed of 
the angels of heaven. Are you sick? Suppose you 
had lived 2000 years ago, when sickness was usually 
fatal. Are you poor? The Saviour of men had 
not where to lay His head.” Cheer up and praise 
God for your blessings. One minister, when he 
announced the hymn, “Count your many blessings, 
name them one by one,” had a man in his con- 
gregation who was stone blind and who murmured, 
“F can’t do that, for I should never get through.” 


II. Prayer Is the Sovereign Cure For Worry. 


Dr. William S. Sadler, in his book, ““The Physi- 
ology of Faith and Fear,” says that thousands of 
suffering souls are held today in the chains of 
imaginary bondage. He compares them to the 
elephant in Central Park, New York, who had 
stood in one spot for years, shackled. with heavy 
chains. One day it occurred to his keepers to 
remove the fetters from his legs and see if he 
would leave his place. He steadfastly refused to 
move, even to secure food, but stood still and bel- 
lowed loudly. He was bound, you see, by the 
chains of his mind just as really as he had been 
bound heretofore by iron chains. And there are 
thousands of prisoners like him today. They are 


156 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


living in a park of beauty, but they don’t see it 
for the chains. The author goes on to say that 
he regards the Christian religion as the ideal sys- 
tem of mind treatment and that prayer is the most 
powerful and effectual worry-remover with which 
we are acquainted. He refers to Gladstone, who 
was once asked what kept him so serene and com- 
posed in the midst of his busy life and he replied, 
“At the foot of my bed, where I can see it on retir- 
ing and on arising in the morning, are the words, 
‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind 
is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.’ ” 
That is good mental therapeutics, says the author 
—it’s the old method of the practice of the pres- 
ence of God. 

I want you to notice that the psychologist and 
the physiologist are recognizing the calming in- 
fluence of prayer—the thing that the church has 
been preaching for years. Religion, then, is not 
merely good for the body, but for the mind and 
soul and spirit as well. This is one of the dis- 
coveries of the twentieth century and it has re- 
sulted in a new emphasis upon the importance of 
religion in everyday life. 

Randall, in his “New Philosophy of Life,” shows 
that there are two ways of emptying a glass of 
water. One way is to turn the glass upside down 
and let all the water run out. The other way is to 
drop shot into the glass, shot by shot, until the 
water is crowded out on the principle that two 


PRAYER AND WORRY 157 


things cannot occupy the same space at the same 
time. Now this reminds us of the Bible way of 
crowding out anxiety. We can’t turn our minds 
upside down and drop the cares out one by one, 
but we can drop a prayer, a meditation, a Bible 
promise down into the midst of the day until all 
the troubles are elbowed out because they have no 
place to sit down and even standing room is 
at a premium. This is the philosophy of substitu- 
tion by which we overcome evil with good. [I re- 
member having read of a dear Christian woman 
who had been called on to undergo a severe and 
dangerous operation in a hospital. It was a life 
and death matter and when on the third and de- 
cisive day somebody met the unbelieving surgeon 
in the hall and inquired after his patient, the doc- 
tor replied, “Oh, she is all right—she is one of 
my ‘Rock of Ages’ patients.” That was it in a nut- 
shell. She had helped herself to God—she had 
put herself through prayer in an attitude to re- 
ceive the Divine help and resting on the Rock of 
Ages, she was indeed secure. 

Bulstrode Whitelocke, who was Cromwell’s en- 
voy to Sweden, was one night so disturbed in mind 
over the state of his nation that he couldn’t sleep. 
His servant, observing him, said: “Pray, sir, will 
you give me leave to ask you a question Bi ere 
tainly.’ “Do you think that God governed the 
world very well before you came into it?” “Cer- 
tainly.” “Then pray, sir, do you not think you may 


158 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


trust Him to govern it as long as you live?’ No 
answer could be given and composure and sleep 
followed. 

A life without prayer reminds us of a piece of 
machinery without a governor, or an aeroplane 
without an equilibrator. It is panic without poise. 
It is excitement without balance. It is fever with- 
out cooling ointment. When somebody insulted 
James Boswell and anger kindled in his face, Dr. 
Johnson, the fine old English philosopher, expos- 
tulated with him, saying, “Consider, sir, how in- 
significant this will appear to you twelve months 
hence.” It is a good thing to view our worries 
in the light of the future—but a still better thing | 
to view our troubles in the quiet light of eternity. 


IIf. Peace Is the Result of Prayer. 


A poet has described an earnest shopper in the 
store of life. The clerk couldn’t seem to under- 
stand what the pilgrim customer wanted. Finally, 
the shopper made the clerk understand he wanted 
to buy peace. Thereupon the good clerk shook 
his head, for he knew peace was not in the shelves 
for sale anywhere. He pointed to an undertaking 
establishment across the street and said: “’Tis 
death across the way who deals in peace.” That’s 
the world’s answer to the peace advocates. “You 
can never have peace in this world of the wrinkled 
brow and the anxious heart. You can’t have peace 
between men or nations, peace without or peace 


PRAYER AND WORRY 159 


within. The only way to get it is to die and when 
you lie still and cold in your coffin, then the minis- 
ter will say, ‘May he rest in peace!’ ”’ 

But that is not what the Bible says. Not at 
all. It says you can have peace while still alive. 
The Bible has peace on its shelves. Paul had peace 
for sale in his Philippian store. He says to his 
shoppers, “Be careful for nothing.” Andrew Mur- 
ray said the same thing in other words. He said: 
“When worry begins, faith ceases. When faith 
begins, worry ceases.” Mark Guy Pearse thought 
so, too. He said, “He who frets has lost his God.” 
Someone has pictured the angels in perplexity over 
the worrying Christian. One says, “Why, hasn’t 
he a Father? He is not in an orphan asylum.” 
A second says, “Does not his Father love him? 
He can’t be a step-son.”’ A third says, “Is not his 
Father great and rich? Why, I heard him singing 
a hymn the other day: 


‘My Father is rich in houses and lands, 
He holdeth the wealth of the world in His hands.” 


And a fourth adds, “Wonder if he knows that his 
Father has given us charge concerning him. How 
then can he fret?” And so the angels were much 
perplexed over the anxious Christian. 

_ Nancy was a good coloured woman who had the 
peace that passeth all understanding. She was re- 
proved for her cheerful good humour by a blue 
Christian who said, “Nancy, it is well enough for 


160 SCIENCE AND PRAYER 


you to be happy now, but I should think that 
thoughts of your future would sober you. Only 
suppose you should have a spell of sickness and be 
unable to work. Or suppose your present em- 
ployer should move away and nobody else give you 
employment; or’—‘Stop,” said Nancy, “I never 
supposes; de Lord is my Shepherd and I know I 
shall not want; and honey, it’s all dem ‘sup- 
poses’ as is making you so miserable. Give 
them up and trust the Lord.” Why not try 
Nancy’s white philosophy of life? Why not get 
out of the desert and enter the promised land of 
peace? The first settlers of New England origi- 
nated their Thanksgiving Day this way. Ina time 
of great despondency it was proposed to proclaim a 
fast, but one old farmer arose and recounted their 
blessings and suggested that they have a Thanks- 
giving Day instead. So they did and so we have 
done ever since. 

Bunyan’s Pilgrim, you remember, after the 
strenuous days of his pilgrimage was brought to 
a comfortable inn and the landlord escorted him 
to a chamber that looked out toward the sunrising 
and the name of that chamber was Peace. That 
House is open to us all—it’s the House of Faith. 
That chamber is open to us all—it’s the chamber 
of Prayer. That sunrise is waiting for us all—it’s 
the sunrise of Peace and Rest. 


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